Some films don’t end when the screen fades to black; they linger within us, like a fever. Alpha, Julia Ducournau’s new feature, is exactly that: a film that burns, itches, and doesn’t heal.
Written and directed by the filmmaker who redefined body horror with Raw and Titane, Alpha is, above all, a dive into the flesh; but a flesh that rots and crumbles to dust, that doesn’t scream, but silences. A family drama that begins intimate and ends apocalyptic, questioning what happens when love and infection become blurred.
I saw Alpha at the Rio Film Festival and I confess: my expectations were enormous. Julia Ducournau is my favorite director. A while ago, when someone asked me who I admired most in cinema, I didn’t know how to answer. I only knew after seeing Raw and Titane. There, I understood that her cinema touches me in a rare way: it’s physical, feminine, and wild. She films the body as if she were filming the soul.
And Alpha reaffirms this. In the opening scene, a girl draws on the wounds of the man who cares for her, connecting scars as if trying to reconstruct a lost constellation. It’s beautiful and disturbing, almost impossible to look away. Ducournau’s camera has this brutal delicacy: making us look even when we want to look away.
“This is not a good time to bleed.”
When the film cuts to Alpha’s uncle taking drugs, I saw an echo of Requiem for a Dream. The needle, the skin, the desperation. But what struck me most was the next scene: Alpha, now a teenager, drunk at a party, letting someone tattoo a crooked “A” on her arm. In that moment, I found myself remembering what I watched at thirteen, like Me, Christiane F., and Skins. That mix of discovery and self-destruction, the desire to belong and the fear of losing oneself. Julia Ducournau understands this threshold like few others, the moment when the body wants to be free and ends up becoming a prison.
The film is a grand pandemic odyssey. The infection here is both literal and symbolic: bodies that turn to marble before dissolving into white powder. Fear spreads, and society disintegrates—a reflection of everything we’ve experienced: the isolation, the paranoia, the lack of touch. There’s a moment when Alpha’s mother, played captivatingly by Golshifteh Farahani, cleans up her daughter’s vomit and discovers the fresh cut of her tattoo, and I felt the lump in my throat of someone who loves and fears at the same time.
Tahar Rahim is splendid as the uncle, a frail, sick, and guilt-ridden body. The relationship between the three: mother, daughter, and brother, is the beating heart of the film. It’s where Ducournau transforms horror into tenderness, illness into bond.
And as always, the soundtrack is a character in its own right. When Portishead started playing right at the beginning, I felt that chill that only her cinema evokes, as if each beat were a drop of blood falling in slow motion.
“It must be hell to be a kid these days.”
Yes, the final act drags on too long, with somewhat confusing time jumps. But even there, there’s an emotional coherence: the chaos is part of the experience. Alpha is a film about collapse—of the body, of the family, of the world.
I left the screening feeling covered in the same white powder that dominates the screen. As a spectator, I felt the physical discomfort; as a screenwriter, I admired the courage. And as a woman, I recognized myself in that final gesture, trying to reattach someone’s torn flesh.
In the end, Alpha isn’t about viruses. It’s about the contagion of loving someone to the point of pain. And perhaps that’s why I keep thinking about it—and about Julia Ducournau—long after the theater lights have gone out.
You can find Alpha at Festival do Rio.
Did you like the content? Leave a comment to let me know!
See you in the next post.