Why Wasn’t Alice Diop’s ‘Saint Omer’ at Cannes?

A few people wrote wondering why Alice Diop’s “Saint Omer” wasn’t at Cannes, especially since the French films at this year’s edition were so weak.

I truthfully don’t know the absolute answer. What’s peculiar about Diop not being at Cannes is that her film was definitely submitted there and the selection committee really liked it. “Saint Omer” definitely made the shortlist, but not more than 48 hours later, even before Cannes even announced their lineup, I found out that Diop’s film ended up being taken by Venice.

I believe this was a case of Cannes waiting too long to lock it up and Venice quickly taking advantage of that opportunity to grab “Saint Omer”. That’s how these things work sometimes. Diop probably didn’t want to risk saying no to Venice’s competition invite and just went that direction.

The irony ends up being that “Saint Omer” is now the most critically-acclaimed French film of 2022, and on France’s Oscar shortlist for Best International film submission. I wrote about the film at TIFF:

“A true original. Alice Diop’s much-anticipated fiction debut. Hailing from France, Diop tells the story of Rama, a novelist who attends the trial of Laurence Coly at the Saint-Omer Criminal Court. Rama uses Laurence’s story to write a modern-day adaptation of the ancient myth of Medea, but things don't go as expected. Rama starts to crumble, seeing more and more of herself in the troubled woman. Diop ends up only showing the bare bones of the wordy testimony, with no flashbacks or clunky subplots, it’s all there in the raw storytelling, uncovering shades of French colonialism, immigration and culture clashing.”