Alpha (2026)
Director: Julia Ducournau Run Time: 128 min. Rating: R Release Year: 2025 Language: French
Starring: Emma Mackey, Finnegan Oldfield, Golshifteh Farahani, Mélissa Boros, Tahar Rahim
Country: France, Belgium
Language: French, English, Berber languages
About the film:
When Alpha returns home from a party with a crude stick-and-poke tattoo, her mother fears the needle may have infected her with a mysterious blood-borne disease that has been spreading through the community. As panic grows and rumors spread, Alpha faces isolation at school and tension at home while her mother confronts the terrifying realities of the epidemic in the hospital ward where she works.
Moving between past and present, the film follows the unraveling of a fragile family as Alpha’s troubled uncle—a recovering heroin addict—reenters their lives, exposing deeper wounds and unresolved trauma. Blending psychological drama with Julia Ducournau’s (Raw) signature visceral imagery, Alpha uses the outbreak of a strange illness—one that slowly turns the bodies of the infected to marble—as an allegory for fear, stigma, and the social fractures that emerge during times of crisis.
About the filmmaker:
Julia Ducournau is a French filmmaker known for her bold, visceral storytelling and boundary-pushing approach to genre cinema. She first gained international attention with her debut feature Raw (2016), a coming-of-age horror film that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and became a critical sensation. Ducournau made history with her second feature, Titane (2021), which won the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or, making her only the second woman ever to receive the honor as a solo director.
Blending body horror with themes of identity, transformation, and desire, Ducournau has established herself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary international cinema.
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