(Paris) The movie Saint Omertwice awarded in early September at the Venice Film Festival, by director Alice Diop has been chosen to represent France at the 2023 Oscars, the National Cinema Center (CNC) announced on Friday.
Posted at 3:26 p.m.
Inspired by a true story of an infanticide trial, Saint Omer seeks to explore the “universal question” of the “relationship to motherhood”, affirmed the director during the Mostra.
His film tells the story of Laurence Coly, played by Guslagie Malanda, a Senegalese immigrant accused of killing her 15-month-old baby by abandoning her on a beach in northern France at rising tide. The film, centered on the trial, is directly inspired by a news item from 2013 and the trial that followed.
This is the first feature film by the 43-year-old director, until then specializing in documentaries whose We (2021), which took the viewer to meet a territory — that crossed by a train serving working-class towns in the Paris region — and its inhabitants.
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize and the First Film Prize in Venice, Saint Omer is “a powerful film, emblematic of the revival of French cinema that we are proud to have accompanied in particular by the advance on receipts”, welcomed the boss of the CNC, Dominique Boutonnat, quoted in the press release. It will be released in theaters on November 23 in France.
The 95e The Oscars ceremony will take place on March 12, 2023 in Los Angeles.
Previously, a pre-selection of 15 films will be unveiled on December 21, 2022, before the five finalist films on January 24, 2023.
The last French film to win the Oscar for best international film was Indochina by Régis Wargnier, in 1993. Titanium by Julia Ducournau, tricolor representative in 2022, had not been shortlisted by the Academy of the Oscars.