Four years after winning the Palme d’Or for Titane, Julia Ducournau is back on the Croisette, debuting her latest Cannes Film Festival Competition entry Alpha. Inside the Palais late Monday local time, the genre-bending movie received a 12-minute ovation.
The response came after a disruption mid-screening, when some people in the audience in the gallery section began shouting to stop the movie. The movie continued, however, and the shouts died down after a minute or two.
Ducournau thanked all who supported her film after the screening.
Julia Ducournau thanks everyone who supported her Cannes Palme d’Or contender ‘Alpha’ #Cannes2025 pic.twitter.com/mh9gt0sDhu
— Deadline (@DEADLINE) May 19, 2025
Alpha centers on 13-year-old Alpha (Mélissa Boros), a troubled girl who lives with her single mom. Their world collapses the day Alpha returns from school with a tattoo on her arm. The film is set in the 1980s and ’90s.
Golshifteh Farahani, Tahar Rahim, Emma Mackey, Finnegan Oldfield and Louai El Amrousy also star.
After serving as the U.S. distributor for body horror Titane, Neon is back in business with Ducournau as the North American distributor for Alpha.
When Titane was awarded the Palme d’Or in 2021, Ducournau became only the second woman ever to take the top prize (Justine Triet became the third with 2023’s Anatomy of a Fall). In a lost-in-translation mix-up at the time, Spike Lee, who was jury president in 2021, prematurely and inadvertently unveiled Titane as the winner early during the closing awards ceremony.
Fast forward to tonight: Lee’s own film, Highest 2 Lowest, running out of competition, premiered just ahead of Alpha at the Grand Théâtre Lumière.
Diaphana releases Alpha in France while Charades and FilmNation Entertainment are handling sales in the rest of the world.
Producers are Jean des Forêts and Amelie Jacquis of Petit Film and Eric & Nicolas Altmayer of Mandarin & Compagnie, with Frakas Productions co-producing.
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