Alice Diop
French filmmaker (born 1979)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alice Diop (born 1979) is a French filmmaker. Her films include documentaries about contemporary French society and the feature drama film Saint Omer (2022).
- Director
- screenwriter
Alice Diop | |
|---|---|
Diop in 2022 | |
| Born | 1979 (age 46–47) Aulnay-sous-Bois, Paris, France |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 2005–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] The family had five children and lived until Diop was ten in the commune's Cité des 3000 housing project.[3][4] After her early schooling, she studied African colonial history at the Sorbonne, visual sociology at the University of Évry, and documentary filmmaking at La Fémis (workshop).[3][5][6]
Career
Diop's first films have been described as "earnest, slightly didactic portraits of marginalized populations".[7] 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).[8] In 2011, her documentary La Mort de Danton followed an aspiring actor from Aulnay.[9]
In 2016, Diop released two films. The first, La Permanence (English title: "On Call"), takes place in a medical center for refugees in Paris.[10] 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.[11][12][13]
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.[7][14] 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".[15]
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.[16] 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.[17] 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.[7][17]
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.[7][18] 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).[17] 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".[17][19] In 2023, a panel at Slate named Saint Omer one of the 75 best movies by black directors.[20]
In June 2024, Diop signed a petition addressed to French President Emmanuel Macron demanding France to officially recognize the State of Palestine.[21]
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
- La Mort de Danton (2011)
- Prix des Bibliothèques – Cinéma du Réel (2011)
- Grand Prix – 7th Festival International Film d'Education (2011)
- Les Étoiles – SCAM (2012)
- La Permanence (2016)
- Marcorelles French Institute Award – Cinéma du Réel (2016)
- Vers la tendresse (2016)
- Grand Prix France – Festival du Cinéma de Brive (2016)
- Prix du public – FIFF (2016)
- Best Short Film – 42nd César Awards (2017)[22][23]
- Nous (2020)
- Saint Omer (2022)
- Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize and Lion of the Future Award – 79th Venice International Film Festival (2022)[26][27]
- César Award for Best First Film.[28]
- 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.[29]
- Grand Prix – Film Fest Gent 2022