Alice Diop, Silver Lion: “We will no longer be silent”

French director Alice Diop poses after receiving the Lion of the Future for Best First Film and the Silver Lion, Grand Jury Prize, for "Saint Omer", September 10, 2022 at the Venice Film Festival.

© Andreas SOLARO / AFP

Text by: Elisabeth Lequeret Follow

4 mins

" 

 " It is with these words that Alice Diop, very moved, in a sober white silk sheath, came to receive the Silver Lion, Grand Jury Prize at this 79th Venice Film Festival for "Saint Omer", after having received the Lion of the Future for best first film a few moments earlier.

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First feature film by the 43-year-old director,

looks back on a news item which, in 2013, had upset France.

A young woman of Senegalese origin, Fabienne Kabou, had abandoned her 15-month-old daughter at the rising tide, at Berck Plage.

Diop draws from it a film of a rigor and a remarkable sobriety, behind closed doors of court where the word of the criminal is confronted with the glance of a woman in the room, novelist spectator.

Two black women, therefore, in mirror image, played by two new faces, Kayije Kagame and Guslagie Malanda.

The latter, in the role of the accused, sometimes absent from herself, sometimes burning with intensity, all in the desire to snatch her assignments, constantly recalls, through her interpretation, the " 

 by Marguerite Duras (a great reference for the filmmaker).

Kayije Kagame in “Saint Omer” by French director Alice Diop, winner of the Silver Lion, Grand Jury Prize and Lion of the Future for the best first film at the Venice Film Festival 2022. © SRAB FILMS ARTE

“We will not be silent anymore”

It was in 2005 that the singular voice of Alice Diop was heard for the first time.

Born in Aulnay-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis), in 1979, of parents from Senegal, came to the cinema after studying sociology and history at the Sorbonne, she then made her first documentary film,

, anchored at the Rose des vents, a huge district made up of several public housing bars in the north of Paris.

"

noted the filmmaker recently.

A way of remembering what has always irrigated his work.

Thus, when Clichy-sous-Bois flares up, after the death of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, France 5 commissions a report from him.

She spent nearly a year scouting and drew the impressive 

 (2006) where her patient and informed approach, inspired by the great American documentary filmmaker Fred Wiseman, contrasted with the media coverage of the event, chain damage: " 

 ”.

Guslagie Malanda in "Saint Omer" by French director Alice Diop, winner of the Silver Lion, Grand Jury Prize and Lion of the Future for Best First Film at the Venice Film Festival 2022. © Laurent Le Crabe

The pure grace of his cinematographic gesture

Will follow, on the same thread,

and

 : the first on the training of the actor Steve Tientcheu at the Simon course, the other on Bobigny and a medical permanence for migrants.

In 2016, his camera listened to young people from the neighborhoods, who confided in him love and disappointment:

received the César for best short film.

In 2021, a new feature-length documentary,

, wins the Best Film award in the Encounters section, in 2021, at the Berlin festival.

In this oblique portrait of a France seen in the mirror of the RER B, from the rich and verdant Chevreuse valley to the gray concrete of the north of Paris, Alice Diop also returns to her family history, organizing through this "we" the meeting of populations allegedly incompatible, by the sheer grace of his cinematographic gesture.

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