Variety by Jessica Kiang

Saint Omer challenges accepted ideas of perspective, of subjectivity and objectivity — and even of what cinema can be when it’s framed by an intelligence that doesn’t accept those accepted ideas.

The Hollywood Reporter by Lovia Gyarkye

Saint Omer might be fiction, but Diop does not stray too far from her documentary roots. The film maintains a sense of naturalism even during its most tense moments. Diop’s directing style leans observational, as if she is watching and recording her screenplay’s effect on her performers.

CineVue by John Bleasdale

Saint Omer is a deeply intellectual film – Medea is referenced several times as a frame of understanding – but it’s also heartfelt. There is a compassion to the dispassion: an empathy.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

The severity and poise of this calmly paced movie, its emotional reserve and moral seriousness – and the elusive, implied confessional dimension concerning Diop herself – make it an extraordinary experience.

Original-Cin by Liam Lacey

It’s a stripped-down French legal drama, with a carefully controlled, expanding emotional impact, touching on matters of motherhood, gender, immigration and race.

Chicago Tribune by Michael Phillips

Above all Saint Omer is a singularly moving courtroom drama.

The A.V. Club by Murtada Elfadl

This is a rich text, bracing for the minutiae it includes and for what it excises. Its power comes from a director who knows exactly what story they want to tell and how to tell it well.

RogerEbert.com by Sheila O'Malley

Alice Diop understands how silence, when allowed to exist, vibrates with echoes, and it is these echoes that are trying to speak to us. They have a lot to say. "Saint Omer" shows us how to listen.

Collider by Chase Hutchinson

It reveals its most haunting truths to us slowly even as it seems to lay all its cards on the table early on. In doing so, it confronts us with deeper truths we would otherwise ignore.

Observer by Emily Zemler

This is a film that everyone, but particularly women, should see. It is a core-shattering experience in every frame.

Slashfilm by Caroline Cao

Saint Omer peels back the curtain on how society formulates judgments according to a person's race and cultural background while absolving itself of the systemic flaws.

TheWrap by Ronda Racha Penrice

In her narrative debut, Diop has found a way to mix her hard-hitting documentary style with fiction to raise a mirror to society. This new arena, with its wider reach, makes Diop an exciting filmmaker to watch.

The Playlist by Robert Daniels

Diop’s Saint Omer doesn’t condescend to the viewer by slinking toward black-and-white offerings of good and evil, or broad statements about race or gender. This ripped-from-the-headlines narrative accomplishes a feat far more creative, and a bit less forced. It dances on the surface of these participants, and in their subtle ripples, to reveal the humanity in the seemingly inhumane.

Screen Daily by Wendy Ide

There’s a combination of humane sensitivity and intellectual agility at play in this story.

Slant Magazine by Pat Brown

If courtroom dramas are usually about taking a stand, Saint Omer shows us that the most impactful truths often go unspoken.

IndieWire by Sophie Monks Kaufman

With her first fiction feature, Diop lets real material speak with an ancient sadness, with hope offered in the form of Rama who keeps moving, carrying a burden of knowledge into the birth of a brave new life.

Time Out by Kaleem Aftab

The powerhouse denouement is a staggering insight into how colonial legacies continues to affect lives today.

Time Out

The powerhouse denouement is a staggering insight into how colonial legacies continues to affect lives today.