Alpha

Thirteen-year-old Alpha lives with her single mother when an impulsive decision suddenly changes the way everyone sees her. After returning from a party with a freshly inked tattoo, the possibility of infection enters their home and with it a fear that quickly spreads through Alpha’s family, school and everyday life. Set between the 1980s and 1990s, Julia Ducournau’s ALPHA imagines a fictional epidemic whose atmosphere of panic, stigma and uncertainty deliberately echoes the AIDS crisis. At home, Alpha’s mother, a doctor, tries to protect her daughter while dealing with another painful presence: her brother Amin, who is infected with the virus and struggling with addiction. Played by Tahar Rahim, Amin becomes central to Alpha’s experience of illness and mortality, while the bond between the three reveals a family shaped by fear, tenderness and wounds that have accumulated over time. Ducournau approaches the epidemic through a surreal transformation of the body. Those affected gradually harden into marble-like forms, turning illness into a physical image that is both frightening and strangely beautiful. As in RAW and TITANE, bodily change becomes inseparable from emotional experience, but here the focus shifts toward adolescence, family and the social consequences of collective fear. ALPHA premiered in Competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. The film’s cinematographer Ruben Impens and sound mixer Stéphane Thiébaut received the CST Award for Best Artist-Technician for the film’s visual and sonic creation. With Mélissa Boros as Alpha alongside Golshifteh Farahani and Tahar Rahim, Ducournau combines body horror and family drama in a story about growing up in the shadow of illness and fear.