Shown as part of the Dare strand at the London Film Festival, Alpha is an audacious and astonishing film that reaches deep into the human condition as much as it responds to recent world events.

This Belgian and French film finds the world gripped by a fatal disease that turns the infected to marble. When troubled-teen Alpha ill-advisedly gets a tattoo of the letter ‘A' on her arm, it triggers a prolonged period where her doctor mother fears she has contracted the incurable disease. Timelines blur as we follow Alpha and her mother from that point as well as years earlier, as they contend with the growing pandemic, the appearance of Alpha's addict uncle, and the teen's relationships and alienation at school.

Writer-Director Julia Ducournau has impressive body-horror credentials (she picked up the Palme d'Or for Titane in 2021), and Alpha once again finds her at the peak of uncompromising elevated horror. Part coming-of-age story, part post-pandemic cathartic horror, part exploration of grief, Alpha is a deeply rewarding genre fusion with a sophisticated narrative that lets its central performances glow with agonising emotion.

As a coming-of-age story, the director pulls every metaphorical lever. Mélissa Boros is gripping in the titular role, with a mesmerising ‘old gaze' often staring from behind her young eyes. Essentially, despite the horrors and ambiguity around her, she's just a child growing up with relatable issues. She's an immigrant but doesn't have a connection to the language or superstitions of the generations above. She fights frequent bullying, but has empathy for a teacher grieving his partner lost to the disease when her classmates don't notice.

Alpha sheds blood for much of the movie — whether from the tattoo, multiple tests or banging her head in a swimming pool. When Ducournau draws the camera back on that scene, the blood spreads around Alpha like the wings of an Angel of Death as her schoolmates scramble to the sides. Like much of the movie, this could be another dramatic snapshot of growing up. But it's wholly something else in the intense fear of the unknown that Ducournau builds around an intelligently realised disease.

As a body horror, that unnamed disease hits close to home. Many elements mark the bloodborne virus as an analogue for HIV/AIDS, and the implications of a 13-year-old contracting it from needles while navigating sexual advances are clear. But in the wake of the COVID pandemic, there are other dimensions. As Emma Mackey's phlebotomist (a brief but memorable role) tellingly puts it, this changed world “must be hell for kids.”

It's a brave and brilliant decision to make the disease beautiful. As sufferers are gradually overtaken by calcium, solid marble legs clunk on a nightclub bar or the floor of a hospital waiting room, until a thick mask completes a statue. It's petrifying, it's sensitively handled, and it cuts to the soul.

Alpha may lend her name, and its multiple meanings, to the film's title, but it's arguably her mother who's the true centre. Golshifteh Farahani puts in a remarkable performance, constantly fighting for her daughter and brother as much as against the insidious disease. She's painfully authentic, as is Tahar Rahim as her brother Amin. With his muscles and sinews contorting in seizures at night, he's an incredible study of addiction.

Watching Alpha and Amin's understanding grow is an equally harrowing and life-affirming delight, building to a feverish night out backed by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' The Mercy Seat. Beethoven and Portishead also contribute to a pitch-perfect score that supports the film's extraordinary moments of magic realism.

Perhaps the most successful auteur choice is the split timeline. It's not signposted, encouraging us to join dots and spot details in frames. But the promise that gives repeat viewings is just part of its achievement.

Alpha may be uncompromising, with heavy hints at underage sex, frequent graphic drug taking, and intricately filmed body horror. But what could have crumbled under the weight of its themes, like the dusty victims lining its depleted hospital wards, instead unites contemporary issues in a devastating blend of fear, laughter, addiction, grief and hope.

Alpha screened as part of the Dare strand at the London Film Festival 2025