Join Cal State Fullerton’s French Program Thursday, March 14, for a screening of the film “Saint Omer” (2022) by Alice Diop. The New French and Francophone Film Series event will take place at 7 p.m. in Humanities and Social Sciences Building, Room 110.
Based on a true story, “Saint Omer” is a courtroom drama that features Rama, a novelist who attends the trial of Laurence Coly, a young woman accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter. Testimonies from witnesses and Coly’s own words soon shake Rama’s convictions. The film explores Rama’s own cultural alienation, trouble with her mother and intellectual analogies to Elise’s murder that may or may not be accurate. She wonders if she may contain within herself the seeds of whatever has been motivating Laurence.
Interweaving complex themes of mother-daughter bonds, immigrant alienation and postcolonial trauma into a piercing portrait of two mysteriously connected women, filmmaker Diop forgoes mere questions of guilt and innocence in order to plumb the unsettling unknowability of the human soul.
French macarons will be served.