Cannes 2025: Alpha (Julia Ducournau)

What does the A tattoo on Alpha's arm mean?

Lets set the scene: Alpha starts with a hazy house party, where we move from room to room while Portishead's Glory Box is blasting in the background. The air is heavy with teenage hormones as Alpha is getting tattooed by a dirty needle: on her arm, a big, gritty 'A'. This is where we find Alpha, the film's young protagonist; but this is also where the film finds us, the viewers. It shines a lazer-sharp focus on our anxieties and discomfort. It wants us to feel that.

I am not joking: this movie was so uncomfortable someone in the crowd got a heart attack, in theater, in its Cannes 2025 premiere.

But lets start from the top.

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Julia Ducournau's Alpha, her third entry to Festival de Cannes, premiered at a midnight screening. As we sat in the darkness, the older French lady next to me whispered to me "I hope it isn't gonna be too scary". She watched Titane a few years back, she said, and it was "glorious". But she was suspicious of this one.

As the movie started playing, we found ourselves in a place perhaps darker: a haunted and traumatized French suburb, where a single mother is attempting to take care of her rebellious almost-teenage daughter while reconnecting with her long-lost brother.

As the film progressed, more questions were raised: why mark Alpha with a bloodied scarlet letter? How does her A corresponds to the original scarlet letter, if at all? Is this a movie about shame? About the guilt the sick? About never recovering your relationship with your family? Is this an extended metaphor for Covid-19?

As reviewers mentioned (here, and here, and all over Letterboxd), the answers are not entirely clear. At its peak, Alpha successfully delivers an emotional portrayal of familial relationships torn by circumstances. Tahar Rahim's Amin is parts charming and unsettling, and his scenes with Golshifteh Farahani - Alpha's mom - make up for a lot of the film's weaknesses. However, the weaknesses do exist: thematically, it feels as if the film have not decided if it wants to be about Society, or about a family; about the home or about what is outside of it.

So why still watch it? Well, if not for its strong performances, consider watching Alpha for its brave attempt to show something difficult. Leaving the theater, I could not help but think again and again about the film's fascination with blood and dust, which are constantly present on screen. Could this film even dare to be beautiful? Would that be an accurate portrayal of its subject? I think Ducournau made the choice to make an unpleasant film. And it is this deliberate decision that makes it worthy to watch.