LONDON:French filmmaker Julia Ducournau has poured personal emotions and collective trauma into her latest drama, Alpha, which follows a rebellious teenager navigating a world plagued by a virus that transforms patients’ bodies into marble.
Ducournau, best known for her Palme d’Or-winning body horror Titane, tells the story of 13-year-old Alpha (Melissa Boros), who gets a tattoo with a potentially contaminated needle at a house party. Her mother (Golshifteh Farahani) panics over the infection risk, and Alpha soon faces social rejection at school.
The filmmaker, who wrote and directed the movie, explained that the story reflects a “dark cycle” in contemporary global events, intertwined with memories of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s and 1990s, although the film is not about AIDS. She said, “I felt that the emotions I experience daily — the knot in my stomach, the tears stuck in my throat — needed expression. The only way to do that was to transpose them to another period where I felt born into a world doomed to die. The main theme I wanted to explore is how fear spreads and generates rejection and hate. If it is shocking for a fictional young girl, why isn’t it shocking in real life?”
Alpha also stars Tahar Rahim, known from The Prophet, as Alpha’s uncle Amin, a drug addict re-entering her life. Rahim underwent a significant physical and emotional transformation for the role, losing over 20 kilograms and participating in charity work supporting drug users.
Spending time with addicts and observing outreach programs helped Rahim understand the nuances of addiction, which informed his performance. “I felt like a scientist in his own lab, experimenting to see if it would explode or not to create something,” said Rahim, 44. “It’s one of the best experiences of my acting career, and also personally, because I felt completely open and able to sense everything around me.”
Alpha is scheduled to open in UK cinemas on Friday.
