Omar Killed Me - French Film Festival  MA15+

Rating MA15+

Release DateTuesday, 27 March 2012

Length 1hrs 41min

Main Cast Sami Bouajila, Denis Podalydès, Maurice Bénichou

Movie DirectorRoschdy Zem

DistributorFrench Film Festival

This second feature from French actor/director Roschdy Zem (Bad Faith) is a compelling dramatization of a famous crime that took place in Mougins (south of France) two decades ago.

June, 1991. Sixty-five year-old Ghislaine Marchal was found stabbed and beaten to death in her comfortable villa, located in an affluent suburb north of Cannes. Chief amongst the clues was a grammatically incorrect inscription which roughly translated as “Omar Kill me”, written in her blood and seemingly incriminating her gardener, Omar, a poorly educated Moroccan immigrant. Despite the fact that Omar had an alibi and many questioned why an educated woman would write her last words, even under dire circumstances, with such poor grammar, the authorities were keen to put the case to rest and an illiterate immigrant proved an all-too easy suspect.

Journeying through Omar’s harrowing incarceration and journalist Pierre-Emmanuel Vaugrenard’s investigation on the validity of the case, we experience Omar’s prison re-birth as a self-educated man and the gradual change of public opinion towards a man whom many were keen to convict on the basis of his race and social standing… or lack thereof.

“A dignified and fascinating movie about a man crushed by the judicial system” - Le Nouvel Observateur