In November, 2013, a baby girl was found drowned on the beach at Berck-surMer, in northwest France. Not long afterward, police arrested the child’s mother, Fabienne Kabou, who was charged with murder. Born and raised in Dakar, Kabou was academically bright, and had come from Senegal to France, where she pursued her studies. She had moved in with a much older man; he was the father of the girl who died.
One of those who attended the subsequent trial, in the town of Saint-Omer, was the filmmaker Alice Diop. Hitherto, Diop’s work has been in documentary; now we have her first feature, “Saint Omer,” which is clearly and closely inspired by the case of Kabou, and which retains the attentiveness—the patient ardor—of a good documentary. Much of the movie is set in a courtroom, and includes not just lengthy scenes of cross-examination but also, more discomforting still, moments of suspended animation, as it were, during which one character stares or glares at another. The presiding judge (Valérie Dréville) is, quite rightly, the glarer-in-chief.
Esta historia es de la edición January 16, 2023 de The New Yorker.
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Esta historia es de la edición January 16, 2023 de The New Yorker.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
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TRIPLE FAULT
A meal is never just a meal in a Luca Guadagnino movie; each bite is a prelude to a kiss, every feast a form of foreplay.
NIGHT MUSIC
“Stereophonic” and Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club” on Broadway.
LITTLE OLD HER
Is Taylor Swift doing too much?
BEASTLY MATTERS
Where the logic behind the concern for animal welfare begins and ends.
PULSE
He footed off his shoes, the logs balanced on an arm, and tugged the door shut.
TOWER IN FLAMES
What kind of right is academic freedom?
THE BATTLE FOR ATTENTION
How do we hold on to what matters in a distracted age?
ON NATIVE GROUNDS
Deb Haaland faces the cruel history of the agency she now leads.
DESIGN FOR LIVING
Can converting office towers into apartments save empty downtowns from ruin?
HOROSCOPES WRITTEN BY MY MOTHER
Your zodiac alignment this month is governed by Venus, the planet of intuition, something my daughter Bess seems to lack.