“Alpha”, interview with actor Tahar Rahim

After winning the Palme d’Or in 2021, Julia Ducournau is back competing at the 78th Cannes Film Festival with her new film “Alpha“. The film is a a coming-of-age exploring themes the French director has already explored in her previous works, like Raw and Titane: Transformation, parent-sons relationships Besides young Mélissa Boros playing the lead as Alpha, at the centre of the story there are Alpha’s mother, on screen by Goldshifteh Farahani and her brother, Alpha’s uncle, Amin, astonishingly played by Tahar Rahim. The actor lost almost 20 kg to play the part as he had to embody a person struggling with addiction. He tells us: “This part was a gift for me and I knew that it was inherent to the project to physically match the part. I had to be thin and at a certain point I was thin enough to make it believable but I decided I needed to go further because I needed to experience that void the people that are struggling with addiction are trying to fill up with the product”.