Tahar Rahim, in “Alpha,” by Julia Ducournau: “I needed to feel a lack, like drug users”

He can't smoke, even in the leafy courtyard of this Parisian hotel in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. "The smoke isn't going to rise into the rooms, are you?" jokes Tahar Rahim, before putting out his cigarette in the early days of summer at the end of June. A few weeks after the mixed reception at Cannes of Julia Ducournau's third feature film, Alpha , the Franco-Algerian actor, born in 1981 in Belfort, is keen to defend "this immense film, particularly important in [his] career." He plays a drug addict in the 1980s, suffering from a strange illness (AIDS, in the background, is not named), alongside a doctor sister (Golshifteh Farahani) and a niece, Alpha (Mélissa Boros), who fears she has caught the virus. Tahar Rahim is known for immersing himself in his characters, as when he played singer Charles Aznavour (1924-2018) in Mehdi Idir and Grand Corps Malade's Monsieur Aznavour (2024) . But playing a syringe addict was another matter.

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