Julia Ducournau: „I have a strong need to project myself in all my main characters.”
It’s May 2025, and I’m at the Cannes Film Festival for the fifth time. It’s pouring rain outside, I don’t have an umbrella, and I have to get to my interview with Julia Ducournau, which was scheduled by the folks at Bad Unicorn and is about 20 minutes away by walking. My heart sinks at the thought of missing it. I remember that the festival has a boutique in the port where I’m sure to find umbrellas, so I ran through the rain, trying not to get soaked. I buy a 50 euro umbrella which I regret the minute I receive the receipt, but I know I have no other choice. I arrived at the interview on time, but the waiting time was at least an hour because of the rain. There is even a moment when it seems that they will cancel or postpone my interview to another day, so my heart starts racing again.
Although it was the busiest edition of the festival I’ve ever had, I remember every detail of that day. All the journalists were sitting on the top floor of the Hilton hotel, on a rooftop terrace, trying to shelter from the wind. Shortly before me, a journalist had offended her, which is why they were considering canceling her last two interviews, including mine. I had many questions for her— Alpha is a film that explores what happens in a dysfunctional family, where there is a lot of suffering caused by drug addiction and death, all in a sci-fi universe, where Julia experiments with the limits of the human body. I was curious to find out how she chooses her subjects and when she knows a script is ready, but also what she looks for in an actor. We talked for only 10 minutes and the short interview below came out.
Alpha is a film mostly about dysfunctional families, pain and addiction. I know you studied scriptwriting and you write your own scripts — how long does it take you to write a script and how do you know it’s finished?
I used to think that I had my own pace – and you have to think like that, so you don’t compare yourself with other directors or screenwriters – and mine used to be three years. I wrote both Raw and Alpha in three years, which is very long, because it feels like fifteen years. I didn’t intend to make Alpha now. I started working at another one that dropped when I realized I am repeating myself. That I am too comfortable and when you’re too comfortable, you’re not creative, so I dropped it. And I had in mind this idea which I thought I was going to make later, in 10 – 15 years, when I would gain more experience, but when I started writing, it took me one year and a half. So half the time I was used to. And I realized it’s not your own pace that counts, but the film’s pace.
With all your three films, you have discovered incredible actresses. What speaks to you the most in an actor’s audition and how did you find Melissa Boros, the girl that plays Alpha?
I do find a lot of pleasure discovering new actresses. I’m so glad to meet new voices, new energies, it’s extremely exciting. What I’m looking for when I cast someone who’s not extremely known is the energy – my capacity to relate to that person. Because my scripts are very personal, I have a strong need to project myself in all my main characters. With Melissa, it was instant, the moment we met. She moved me so much because she corresponded so well with myself in my teenage years. The way she moves, she talks, the awkwardness, but also having a lot of certitudes, in a very endearing way. And it’s not that she has all this naturally, she’s also a very talented actress. She knows how to play with it.
You’re already at your third body-horror genre film and you keep getting better at it. Do you feel you achieved maturity as a director or would you rather say you’re still experimenting?
I don’t know, I don’t think you ever feel like an authority in anything, in life and especially not in art, where it’s always about doubting yourself and measuring yourself up to the world, in the sense you want to be in tune with the modernity of the world you live in. You should ask the same question to Martin Scorsese because he is definitely an authority (laughs). I wonder if he will say he is, but I’m still experimenting.
Cinema always had a fourth wall but in recent years, we now seem to add more walls – that of the screens and even more recently, with the use of AI that might change forever the way we do and look at cinema. What is cinema to you and do you ever see yourself adapting to new technologies?
I’ve always thought of social media as a fifth wall, so I totally agree with you. I think cinema and art, in general, is always about breaking all the walls. We need to do it constantly so we can talk straight to the audience. Art is there to provoke a conversation, one that can be nationwide or even worldwide – between me and every single individual that will watch my movie. There are infinite possible conversations which makes art so great. As far as AI – some of the CGI in Alpha was made with the help of AI and that is still very obscure to me. As far as this remains a tool, I’m okay with it. We were able to achieve so much in Alpha thanks to that. The issue is when people try to replace people with AI. That would be a tragedy for the world.
Film producer and founder of ADFR, she dreamed since she was little of having a magazine one day. Alongside her job as editor-in-chief, she writes the interview of the month. She loves animals, jazz music and films festivals.
Title
Alpha
Director/ Screenwriter
Julia Ducournau
Actors
Tahar Rahim, Golshifteh Farahani, Melissa Boros
Country
France, Belgium
Year
2025
Distributor
Bad Unicorn
Film producer and founder of ADFR, she dreamed since she was little of having a magazine one day. Alongside her job as editor-in-chief, she writes the interview of the month. She loves animals, jazz music and films festivals.