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After the shock of Titane, Julia Ducournau is back with Alpha
French filmmaker Julia Ducournau, winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival for her second feature Titane, has recently revealed more details about Alpha. Her highly anticipated new film premiered in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. The cast includes French-Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani and actor Tahar Rahim.
Alpha, the new film by Julia Ducournau starring Golshifteh Farahani and Tahar Rahim
Following the successes of Raw (2016) with Garance Marillier and Titane with actress Agathe Rousselle, which earned her the Palme d’Or in Cannes, Julia Ducournau’s third feature, Alpha, will soon come out. Shot in Le Havre in 2024, the film was presented in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
A press release described it as “her most personal and profound work.” Alpha explores themes of family, love, and monstrosity. During a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival on April 10th, 2025, Thierry Frémaux, the festival’s general delegate, explained: “Julia Ducournau isn’t resting on her laurels. She’s a filmmaker who visits genre cinema, who takes it (like all genre filmmakers) to make her own personal cinema, a cinema of mise en scène, formal inventions and actors. Golshifteh Farahani and Tahar Rahim, whom you’ll hardly recognize as he does a very striking composition role.”
The official synopsis of Julia Ducournau’s new film, set for release on August 20th, 2025, reads: “Alpha, 13, is a troubled teenager who lives alone with her mother. Their world comes crashing down the day she comes home from school with a tattoo on her arm.”
A screening at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival
The cast of Alpha features internationally acclaimed actress Golshifteh Farahani as one of the protagonists. Born in Tehran, the French-Iranian actress has already worked with Jim Jarmusch (Paterson), Arnaud Desplechin (Brother and Sister), Mamad Haghighat (Two Angels), and Ridley Scott (Body of Lies).
She is joined by French actor Tahar Rahim, known for his performances in Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet and the Netflix series The Serpent. He also portrayed Paul Barras, former Director of the French Directory, in Ridley Scott’s Napoleon alongside Joaquin Phoenix, and played Armenian singer Charles Aznavour in Monsieur Aznavour, directed by Grand Corps Malade and Mehdi Idir. For Alpha, he lost a significant amount of weight. The cast also includes Emma Mackey. The lead role has been given to actress Melissa Boros (The Silence of Sibel).
Julia Ducournau’s controversial cinema
Alpha tackles the early days of the AIDS epidemic and is one of the most anticipated films of the year. Yet, it is already obvious that it won’t please everyone. As a self-proclaimed devotee of David Cronenberg, Julia Ducournau‘s work has long divided audiences. In 2021, Titane thrilled genre film enthusiasts, while leaving others unmoved. French media L’Obs praised “the affirmation of a filmmaker who rejects tepidity and believes, above all else, in the power of cinema.” Libération lamented that “Julia Ducournau’s second film, as nightmarish as it is messy, mixes disgusting fantasies and disordered repulsions in the arbitrary swirl of a shaker.”
During the promotion of David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future (2022), actor Viggo Mortensen took the opportunity to comment: “Years ago, Cronenberg’s Crash caused a scandal. In my opinion, no offense to the director of Titane, but Crash was head and shoulders above that movie, because it wasn’t just about superficial shock value and unconventional imagery. There was a story beneath it, there was true character exploration in Crash, much more than in Titane, I think.”
Alpha by Julia Ducournau will be out in theaters on August 20th, 2025.
