Alejandro D. Orengo Colón

Puerto Rican based filmmaker and film critic and creator of Cine Más Podcast. I ramble on and on about art house cinema and indie flicks, my friends and colleagues say it’s my secret superpower.

Motherhood has always been a herculean task that is neither appreciated nor praised as it should be in our society. Motherhood is something that’s taken for granted and only questioned when it’s done incorrectly. With Alice Diop’s first narrative feature, Saint Omer, we get to explore all the facets of motherhood, even the unspeakable aspects that rarely get discussed out in the open.

Saint Omer is loosely based on the 2016 French court case in which Fabienne Kabou got charged with the death of her daughter, who was a year old. Alice Diop, the director, attended the trial and then turned said case into an exploration of empathy, introspection, and catharsis. Diop in turn wrote the narrative of Saint Omer utilizing an alter ego to explore the story.

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