Alice Diop (born 1979) is a French filmmaker. Her films include documentaries about contemporary French society and the feature drama film Saint Omer (2022).
Diop's first films have been described as "earnest, slightly didactic portraits of marginalized populations".[6] Fifteen years after leaving Aulnay-sous-Bois, she returned to film the cultural diversity of the area she grew up in for her first documentary, La Tour du monde (2005).[7] In 2011, her documentary La Mort de Danton followed an aspiring actor from Aulnay.[8]
In 2016, Diop released two films. The first, La Permanence (English title: "On Call"), takes place in a medical center for refugees in Paris.[9] The second documentary that year, Vers la tendresse ("Towards Tenderness"), features interviews with four young men talking about masculinity and the difficulty of finding love and intimacy.[10][11][12]
Diop's next documentary, Nous ("We"), came out in 2020. Centering on suburban life along the
RER B rail line outside Paris, it marked a broadening of Diop's subject to a wider breadth of French society.[6][13] Selecting it as a Critic's Pick, The New York Times wrote that the film "points to the impossibility of portraiture itself, whether of a life, a people or a nation".[14]
Saint Omer, Diop's first
feature film, premiered in 2022 at the
79th Venice International Film Festival, where it won the
Grand Jury Prize and the
Luigi De Laurentiis Award for a debut film.[15] The film was inspired by the trial (which Diop attended) of
Fabienne Kabou, a Senegalese immigrant who abandoned her one-year-old daughter on a beach to die.[16] Fascinated by the high-profile case, Diop recalled deciding to make a film about it during the trial's closing arguments, when she and others in the courtroom were visibly moved.[6][16]
The script, co-written with
Amrita David and
Marie NDiaye, significantly borrows from court transcripts but tells the story through the lens of a courtroom observer (played by
Kayije Kagame) analogous to Diop.[6][17]Saint Omer was highly acclaimed; director
Céline Sciamma described it as a "cinema poem" akin to Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975).[16]A. O. Scott of The New York Times, naming the film a Critic's Pick, called it an "intellectually charged, emotionally wrenching story about the inability of storytelling—literary, legal or cinematic—to do justice to the violence and strangeness of human experience".[16][18] In 2023, a panel at Slate named Saint Omer one of the 75 best movies by black directors.[19]
In June 2024, Diop signed a petition addressed to French President
Emmanuel Macron demanding France to officially recognize the
State of Palestine.[20]
Filmography
La Tour du monde (2005) – documentary
Clichy pour l'exemple (2005) – documentary
Les Sénégalaises et la sénégauloise (2007) – documentary
Variety and
Golden Globe's Breakthrough Artist Awards – Breakthrough Director award (2023) for serving as chair of the international jury for the Luigi De Laurentiis Lion of the Future Award after winning the award for Saint Omer.[27]