Alice Diop

Alice Diop (born 1979) is a French filmmaker. Her films include documentaries about contemporary French society and the legal drama Saint Omer (2022).

Alice Diop
Diop in 2022
Born1979 (age 43–44)
Aulnay-sous-Bois, Paris, France
Occupations
  • Director
  • screenwriter
Years active2005–present

Early life and education

Diop was born in 1979 in the northern Parisian commune of Aulnay-sous-Bois.[1][2] Her mother and father, who emigrated from Senegal in the 1960s, worked as a cleaner and an industrial painter, respectively.[3] One of five siblings, Diop lived until age 10 in the commune's Cité des 3000 housing project.[3][4] She studied African colonial history at the Sorbonne, visual sociology at the University of Évry, and documentary filmmaking at La Fémis.[3][5]

Career

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]

Diop in 2017

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 real-life 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]

Filmography
  • La Tour du monde (2005) – documentary
  • Clichy pour l'exemple (2005) – documentary
  • Les Sénégalaises et la sénégauloise (2007) – documentary
  • La Mort de Danton (2011) – documentary
  • La Permanence (2016) – documentary
  • Vers la tendresse (2016) – documentary
  • Nous (2020) – documentary
  • Saint Omer (2022) – feature film

Awards

References
  1. "1. Alice Diop". Radio France Internationale. 21 November 2011. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  2. Snaije, Olivia (19 April 2022). "A New French Film Hints at Unity". New Lines Magazine. Archived from the original on 20 September 2022. Retrieved 16 September 2022.
  3. Romney, Jonathan (29 January 2023). "Saint Omer director Alice Diop: 'I make films from the margins because that's my territory, my history'". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  4. "Towards Tenderness". lecinemaclub.com. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  5. Ekchajzer, François (26 August 2016). "Alice Diop, une documentariste proche des douleurs de l'exil" [Alice Diop, a documentary filmmaker close to the pain of exile]. Télérama (in French). Archived from the original on 18 May 2017. Retrieved 5 March 2017.
  6. Blackhurst, Alice (1 March 2023). "Saint Omer Has Secured Alice Diop's Place as One of France's Best Filmmakers". Jacobin. Archived from the original on 1 March 2023. Retrieved 1 March 2023.
  7. "La tour du monde". forumdesimages.fr. Archived from the original on 3 September 2016. Retrieved 5 March 2017.
  8. Bourdon, Gwenael (7 February 2017). "Alice Diop, le documentaire made in 93 en lice aux Césars". Le Parisien (in French). Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  9. van Hoeij, Boyd (4 April 2016). "'On Call' ('La Permanence'): Cinema du Reel Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  10. Usinger, Mike (4 May 2017). "DOXA 2017 review: Vers la Tendresse". The Georgia Straight. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  11. Neves, Patricia (24 February 2017). "César 2017: 'Vers la tendresse', une lumineuse quête d'amour" [César 2017: 'Towards Tenderness', a luminous quest for love]. Marianne (in French). Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  12. Braibant, Sylvie (25 February 2017). "Quand Alice Diop nous entraîne 'vers la tendresse' au masculin" [When Alice Diop leads us 'towards tenderness' in the masculine] (in French). TV5Monde. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  13. Cardamenis, Forrest (29 January 2022). "'Not Just a Formal Thing, But a Political Ethic': Alice Diop on We". Filmmaker. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  14. Girish, Devika (23 June 2022). "'We (Nous)' Review: This Is Us". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  15. Complex, Valerie (13 January 2023). "'Saint Omer' Director Alice Diop On Why It's Important For Her Films To Make A Political Statement". Deadline. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  16. Zuckerman, Esther (16 January 2023). "For the Documentarian Alice Diop, Only Fiction Could Do Justice to a Tragedy". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  17. Brody, Richard (13 January 2023). "'Saint Omer', Reviewed: A Harrowing Trial Inspires a Complex, Brilliant Film". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 2 March 2023. Retrieved 1 March 2023.
  18. Scott, A. O. (12 January 2023). "'Saint Omer' Review: The Trials of Motherhood". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  19. Harris, Aisha; Kois, Dan (27 February 2023). "The New Black Film Canon". Slate. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  20. "Césars: Trump, Adama Traore et Théo s'invitent à une cérémonie très politique". La Parisienne (in French). Archived from the original on 26 February 2017. Retrieved 5 March 2017.
  21. "César 2017: revivez la cérémonie du 24 février". RTL.fr (in French). Archived from the original on 28 February 2017. Retrieved 5 March 2017.
  22. "Awards Ceremony on June 13 with the Winning Films of the Berlinale Documentary Award and the GWFF Best First Feature Award". www.berlinale.de. Archived from the original on 14 June 2021. Retrieved 14 June 2021.
  23. "Berlinale 2021: Awards in the Encounters Section". www.berlinale.de. Archived from the original on 14 June 2021. Retrieved 14 June 2021.
  24. "Venice Film Festival Award Winners 2022". Indiewire. 10 September 2022. Archived from the original on 10 September 2022. Retrieved 10 September 2022.
  25. Pat Saperstein (16 September 2022). "Alice Diop's Venice Prize-Winner 'Saint Omer' Acquired By Neon's Boutique Label Super". Variety. Archived from the original on 16 September 2022. Retrieved 15 September 2022.
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