Keswick Film Festival

Synopsis

After Raw at the 2017 Festival and Titane in 2022, Julia Ducournau's latest film will be a talking point for 2026. It features another returnee with Golshifteh Farahani playing Alpha's mother, a role far from her laid-back appearance in Paterson.

Alpha (Tahar Rahim), a rebellious 13-year-old, lives with her single mom, a doctor with an at-home practice amid the context of a new blood-borne disease. When Alpha returns from a party, drunk, her mother discovers a new, amateur tattoo on her daughter’s arm. Worried she might have been infected by the same disease, their world is suddenly turned upside down, as fear invades their family unit, triggering a chain reaction that unleashes repressed trauma, memory and dread.  

"Alpha turns a coming-of-age drama into a haunting allegory of the AIDS crisis. Ducournau's poetic horror finds empathy in decay, and Tahar Rahim delivers a shattering, soulful performance that freezes and burns at once." Algo Más Que Cine