Julia Ducournau
Filmmaker
April → July 2023
- Cinema
- New York
“Everything comes from something very personal – I’m not going to tell you what, but I can tell you that I’m everywhere in my films. None of them are autobiographical, but it all stems from something that I have in me.”
My name is Julia Ducournau. As I’m typing, I’m a 39-year-old woman, I make films.
“When I was in film school, I started directing small shorts — like everyone — and I actually realized that I did not want someone else to direct something that I had written. For me, it was a continuity. When I write, I write very precisely. I write about the light, I write about the costumes, I write about the song that you have to hear at this moment. But I write about everything.”
“Who cares what I do on a daily basis, or what I am, or whatever. The only thing that counts is the art, my films – they’re my only true way of expressing myself, and after that, I’ve said it all. And then you take it, and you make it your own – and that’s how we communicate.”
“Everything comes from something very personal – I’m not going to tell you what, but I can tell you that I’m everywhere in my films. None of them are autobiographical, but it all stems from something that I have in me”.
ALPHA represents the origin, birth, and contrasts with Omega, the end, death. But when we speak of origin, we imply the notion of a threshold, and thus of transition, of passage. Alpha is a liminal space, empty and desolate, yet full of both the past and the future that it simultaneously holds. In this sense, it is a space of discomfort, perpetually destined to be something other than what it is.
Julia Ducournau spent her writing residency in New York City.
