Golshifteh Farahani of the Extraction films and Tahar Rahim of Madame Web have signed on to star in Alpha, the third film from Raw and Titane director Julia Ducournau, Variety reports. FilmNation and Charades will be presenting the project to potential buyers at the Cannes Film Festival – which is a good place for a Ducournau project to get rolling, since her film Titane won the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top award, a few years ago.
FilmNation Entertainment and Charades provided the following statement: “Alpha is Julia’s most personal, profound work yet, and we are looking forward to a global audience discovering the story with as much excitement as we did. We can’t wait to bring the film to market in Cannes and to launch sales together for the first time and collaborate in this way.“
That’s all they would say about Alpha, as the plot details are being kept under wraps for now.
So, for an idea of what kind of film this might turn out to be, we can only look back at the films Ducournau made previously. Her first movie, Raw, had the following synopsis: Stringent vegetarian Justine encounters a decadent, merciless and dangerously seductive world during her first week at veterinary school. Desperate to fit in, she strays from her principles and eats raw meat for the first time. The young woman soon experiences terrible and unexpected consequences as her true self begins to emerge.
Then Titane told this story: Alexia is a dancer who, after being injured in a car accident as a child, has a titanium plate fitted into her head. Amidst a series of brutal and unexplained murders, her path crosses with Vincent, a firefighter desperately searching for his long-missing son, changing their lives forever.
Of course, those descriptions don’t convey just how wild, strange, and sometimes messy (we’re talking messes caused by fluids) those movies were. Alpha is likely to be another wild ride, so it will be interesting to see what it’s about and how it turns out.
Are you a Julia Ducournau fan, and are you interested in Alpha? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
