Iranian-French actress Golshifteh Farahani and French actor Tahar Rahim are set to star in Julia Ducournau’s new film Alpha, her third feature after Cannes Palme d’Or winner Titane and breakout debut Raw.
Filmnation and Charades, which announced the project on Friday, are co-selling and will launch sales in Cannes.
The project is produced by Eric Altmayer and Nicolas Altmayer at Mandarin & compagnie, Jean des Forêts and Amélie Jacquis at Petit Film, in co-production with Jean-Yves Roubin and Cassandre Warnauts at Frakas Productions.
It has been five years since Ducournau became the then second woman to win the Cannes Palme d’Or, for Titane in 2021, and her third feature is highly anticipated.
She was tied up for much of 2021 and part of 2022 with the film’s festivals run. Since then, she directed two episodes of the Apple TV+ series The New Look, starring Ben Mendelsohn as Christian Dior and Juliette Binoche as Coco Chanel, and has also participated in France’s Villa Albertine artist residency program in New York.
Like Titane, the logline and futher details are under wraps.
“Alpha is Julia’s most personal, profound work yet, and we are looking forward to a global audience discovering the story with as much excitement as we did. We can’t wait to bring the film to market in Cannes and to launch sales together for the first time and collaborate in this way,” said Filmnation and Charades in a joint statement.
The producers added: “Alpha is a new page in Julia Ducournau’s corpus that is both very consistent with the previous ones and entirely new in its tone. To match an exceptional project, it was necessary to transcend conventions, as evidenced by the exceptional combination of producers on one hand and international sales companies on the other.”
