The Saint Omer press tour has been intense for Alice Diop. “My first interview was a Black journalist who asked me just one question, then she started crying, and we fell apart together.” The writer/director nods toward my typed-out questions and smiles, “You are very, very dangerous for me.” But while she may have to endure the weight of festival audiences weeping and journalists’ raw emotions, she feels this has ultimately achieved her goal. “I had a conviction, and I put faith in the story’s political statement. I wrote with the intention of moving people, but I couldn’t anticipate such intensity.” Her elegant but harrowing tale is of Rama (Kayije Kagame), an academic sitting in on the trial of a woman accused of infanticde. Diop’s film placed her in a vulnerable position as it is deeply personal and her protagonist’s life and story resembles her own. But it has received love letters from critics, won the Silver Lion and Lion of The Future
