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Interview with Alice Diop at Villa Médicis
05.12.2022
- Artist
- Alice Diop
Monday, december 5 2022
Interview with director Alice Diop on the occasion of the Italian premiere of her film Saint Omer at the Villa Médicis.
Discover the interview:
Villa Medici was honored to present Saint Omer again on Monday December 5, the first feature film by director Alice Diop, already screened at the second edition of the Villa Medici Film Festival. In this gripping film, the director tackles the unimaginable – infanticide – examining the mysteries of this act with great sensitivity and intelligence.
At the Venice Film Festival 2022, it won the Silver Lion – Grand Prix du Jury and the Lion of the Future – Prix Luigi De Laurentiis. It will also represent France in the Best International Film category at the 2023 Oscars.
The link between fiction and documentary, the role of women in film, the influence of literature on her practice: in this interview, Alice Diop gives us the keys to understanding how Saint Omer was conceived, and more broadly explains her view of the 7 arts.
Synopsis :
Saint-Omer court. Rama, a 30-year-old novelist, attends the trial of Laurence Coly, a young woman accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter after abandoning her on the shore of a northern French beach in the face of a rising tide. Rama intends to turn this case into a contemporary version of the Medea myth. But in the course of the trial, the writer is forced to question the truth of her own experience of motherhood.
2022, France, 118min
With : Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanga, Fatih Sahin
Producer: SRAB FILMS
The screening was organized in partnership with Italian distributor Minerva Pictures.
Alice Diop
French documentary filmmaker of Senegalese origin, Alice Diop was born in 1979 in Aulnay-sous-Bois (France). After studying history, she obtained a degree in visual sociology. She made her first short documentaries in the early 2000s, filming the neighborhood where she grew up, the Paris suburbs and cultural diversity. Among her previous short films, Vers la tendresse won the César for best short film in 2017. Saint Omer is her first feature-length fiction film.
Photo credits :
Cover image: © Laurent Le Crabe
Portrait of Alice Diop: © Cyrille Choupas
Video credits :
Directed and edited by Pier Tommaso Carrescia
Saint Omer photographs: © Srab Films / © Laurent le Crabe
Villa Medici photographs: © Daniele Molajoli
