10 things to know about Julia Ducournau, in the running for a second Palme d'Or at Cannes
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Director Julia Ducournau BERTRAND GUAY / AFP
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Portrait The director who broke the mold and merged genres in "Titane" returns to the competition with "Alpha," a film that serves as a metaphor for the AIDS epidemic.
In 2021, French filmmaker Julia Ducournau received a Palme d'Or for her second feature film, "Titane." Spike Lee, president of the jury, was so eager to announce her name that he almost threw the closing ceremony into disarray by revealing it at the start. Here she is again at the helm of "Alpha" (starring Melissa Boros, Goldshiteh Farahani, and a 20-kilo lighter Tahar Rahim), a film with desaturated images about a Kabyle family affected by an illness. The film takes place between the 1980s and 1990s. And the epidemic clearly evokes the AIDS epidemic. "But also the fear and shame it sowed," the director told Variety.
1. “Basic instinct”Twenty-eight years after Jane Campion's "The Piano," Julia Ducournau became the second woman to be awarded the Palme d'Or and the first to win it alone (Campion, in 1993, had shared it with Chen Kaige for "Farewell My Concubine"). Justine Triet followed suit at the following edition with "Anatomy of a Fall." "Thank you for recognizing with this prize our avid and visceral need for a m…
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