Directed by Alice Diop (France, 2022, 122 mins.). French with English subtitles.

Saint Omer is a searing exploration of motherhood. Although inspired by a true story, the film also cleverly retells the Greek myth of Medea, the sorceress who took her children’s lives to spite their father, Jason, after he left Medea for another woman. The film follows novelist Rama (Kayije Kagame), who attends the trial of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanga), a young woman accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter by abandoning her to the rising tide on a beach in northern France. As the trial unfolds, the words of the accused and the witness testimonies shake Rama’s convictions and call the viewer’s own judgement into question.

“Quietly Momentous. . . . To feel what Rama feels . . . is a paradigm-shifting privilege, perhaps especially when the slow, deepening scorch of Saint Omer is about both how little we can ever truly know anyone, and how it’s only through the constant effort to do so that we might a little better come to know ourselves.” —Variety 

Watch the trailer.