🖤 ALPHA (2025): Cast, Plot, Release Date & Julia Ducournau’s Bold New Psychological Thriller
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🖤 ALPHA (2025): Julia Ducournau’s Haunting Portrait of Rebellion, Identity, and the Mother-Daughter Divide
Coming to French cinemas August 20, 2025
"What happens when a child reclaims their body before the world is ready?"
From the Palme d’Or-winning visionary Julia Ducournau (Titane, Raw) comes ALPHA, a powerful and provocative French drama that explores the fragile boundaries between adolescence and adulthood, control and rebellion, body and identity.
Premiering in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival to critical acclaim, Alpha marks a bold new turn for Ducournau—trading body horror for emotional rawness, yet retaining her unflinching gaze into what makes us human.
🎬 Synopsis: A Mark That Shatters a Family
Alpha (played with striking presence by Mélissa Boros) is a 13-year-old girl living with her emotionally distant single mother (the always compelling Golshifteh Farahani). Life at home is fraught but functional—until Alpha returns from school one day with something shocking: a tattoo on her arm.
This single act—a permanent, defiant mark—sends mother and daughter into a spiral of conflict, confusion, and pain. It’s not just the ink that leaves a scar: it’s the questions it raises about control, trauma, freedom, and who really owns a child’s body.
🧠 A Coming-of-Age Drama With Razor-Edge Intensity
At its core, Alpha is a coming-of-age story, but it’s far from conventional. With Julia Ducournau at the helm, the film doesn’t just observe adolescence—it dissects it.
Through bold cinematography by Ruben Impens, an unsettling score by Jim Williams, and Ducournau’s signature intensity, Alpha captures the disorienting, beautiful, and sometimes violent process of becoming.
🌟 The Cast
Mélissa Boros as Alpha – a breakout performance that balances innocence with fury
Golshifteh Farahani as Maman – complex, loving, terrified of losing control
Tahar Rahim as Amin – a figure from the past that reopens old wounds
Emma Mackey as the School Nurse – a brief but poignant role exploring institutional response
Finnegan Oldfield, Louai El Amrousy, and Jean-Charles Clichet round out the cast
🎞 Behind the Scenes
Director/Writer: Julia Ducournau
Cinematography: Ruben Impens
Editor: Jean-Christophe Bouzy
Music: Jim Williams
Producers: Jean des Forêts, Amelie Jacq, Éric & Nicolas Altmayer
Production Companies: Petit Film, Mandarin & Compagnie, France 3 Cinéma, Frakas Productions
Distributor: Diaphana Distribution
🗓 Key Dates
World Premiere: May 19, 2025 – Cannes Film Festival (Main Competition)
Theatrical Release (France): August 20, 2025
Running Time: 128 minutes
Language: French
🔥 Why Alpha Demands Your Attention
If you’ve followed Ducournau’s career, you know she doesn’t shy away from difficult themes. In Alpha, she shifts from physical grotesqueness to emotional dissection—a different kind of horror: the horror of misunderstanding, of parental fear, of growing up too fast in a world that doesn't understand what you're becoming.
It’s a film that asks:
What does it mean to claim your identity—when even your mother won’t recognize you anymore?
🖊 Alpha isn’t just a name. It’s a beginning. A rebellion. A howl in the face of silence.
Coming to theaters in France, August 20.