Julia Ducournau, director of "Alpha": "I want to show that through fear of the unknown, a society can descend into unheard-of baseness"
Interview With "Alpha," in theaters Wednesday, August 20, the director of "Titane" evokes her adolescence in a hostile France, crossed by the specter of AIDS. More than the disease, it is "the outbreak of homophobia" and "the resurgence of misogyny" that she wanted to recount.
Interview by Guillaume Loison
Julia Ducournau, for the presentation of "Alpha", at the Cannes Film Festival, May 20, 2025. DAVID FISHER/SHUTTERSTOCK/SIPA
We find her at the end of this scorching afternoon, her pair of Ray-Bans screwed onto her nose, more tense than touchy, on the defensive, of course. We were kind of expecting it. At Cannes, the day after the presentation, on May 19, of "Alpha", Julia Ducournau's latest film, the author of these lines didn't mince his words, writing an asymmetrical article, more severe than favorable , which poorly expressed her enthusiasm for the film, which was also unreservedly panned by a nearly unanimous critic.
A small injustice, but an injustice nonetheless, given that the driving forces of "Alpha" possess a transcendental power, mitigating what appears to us to be inadequate or clumsy. At least, we said so, a little too quickly, it's true, in our Cannes review: in our eyes, it is the most per…
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