Archive - Festival 41

An emotional heart beneath a veneer of horror-tinged genre elements

Screen Daily
  • Archive - Festival 41
  • Director: Julia Ducournau
  • France, Belgium 2025
  • 128 minutes
  • French
  • Subtitles in Hebrew, English

Alpha, a troubled 13-year-old, lives with her single mother. Their world collapses the day she returns from school with a tattoo on her arm. What was the needle like? Was it clean or dirty? Her mother demands answers, her mind flashing back to the virus that turned her drug-addict brother, Amin, into a marble statue roughly eight years before. This is what the virus does.

After winning the Palme d'Or with Titane, Julia Ducournau returned to Cannes with another shocker—Alpha—starring Golshifteh Farahani and Tahar Rahim. The mother-daughter infection thriller earned an enthusiastic 11.5-minute ovation after its premiere.

Filmography: Titane (2021), Raw (2016).


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  • Director Julia Ducournau
  • Production Eric Altmayer, Nicolas Altmayer, Jean-Rachid Kallouche, Arnaud Chautard
  • Script Julia Ducournau
  • Cinematography Ruben Impens
  • Editing Jean-Christophe Bouzy
  • Music Jim Williams
  • Festivals Cannes
  • Actors Golshifteh Farahani, Tahar Rahim, Emma Mackey. Mélissa Boros, Finnegan Oldfield
  • Source Lev Cinema