Palme d’Or winner Julia Ducournau showed how deftly she could employ genre and metaphor with her first two features, 2016’s cannibal-themed “Raw” and the 2021 automotive body horror “Titane.” But based on early reactions, the French filmmaker’s third feature, “Alpha,” proved an even higher concept.
“Alpha” stars newcomer Mélissa Boros as the film’s titular 13-year-old protagonist, who is coming of age in a world plagued by a mysterious blood-borne virus that turns people into hardened, statue-like figures coughing up clay sand. Despite seemingly being aware of the risks, Alpha participates in needle-sharing one night, getting a large “A” tattooed on her arm at a house party where Portishead thumps in the background.
But the gravity of the situation only sets in when Alpha’s single mother (Golshifteh Farahani) — a doctor at the local hospital who dedicates her days to treating people infected with the virus — finds out about the tattoo and forces her daughter to get tested.
As the pair wait to find out if Alpha is destined to become another petrified victim of the virus, her estranged uncle Amin (Tahar Rahim) comes back into the picture, plagued by the symptoms of heroin withdrawal. This pushes Alpha further into a state of unrest over her fate, and adds a more literal element to Ducournau’s AIDS allegory, while the film flashes back to happier times from the girl’s childhood.
Neon has released the trailer for “Alpha,” which premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and also stars Emma Mackey, Finnegan Oldfield, and Louai El Amrousy. Set to “The Mercy Seat” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the somber montage of scenes underscores what some critics have described as an uncharacteristically self-serious quality about the film.
That quality, however, seems to be by design. In an interview with Vanity Fair back in March, Ducournau said that, upon reflection, she’d been annoyed with herself for staying in her “comfort zone” with her first two films and was looking to tap into something new with her next work.
“I realized that I was saying something I’d already said in my two previous films. I got bored with it — and annoyed with myself for allowing myself to stay in that comfort zone. From film to film, I always feel like I can go further in the way I expose myself, which is incredibly hard to do,” Ducournau said.
“With each film, I’m thinking that I can put myself in a more vulnerable place, in order to relate to the audience more and more,” she added. “And I’m not done digging. It’s an eternal path: How can I be more sincere? How can I get closer to my emotions? How can I show them in a more precise way, with more generosity? To me, that is the only path. That’s why I make films.”
Fans of the French director — who, up until now, has been known for a different sort of body horror — will be able to see her charting a different path when Neon releases “Alpha” in U.S. theaters on March 27, 2026.
Watch the full trailer below.
