French Women Filmmakers • Julia Ducournau

Grave/Raw (Julia Ducournau, 2016, 98 min., Rated R., France & Belgium)

I didn’t faint in classy cannibal horror – but I didn’t much fancy lunch. Raw is a  a complex drama of adulthood, sex, conformity, hazing, body image and lust. – The Guardian

A cliché in detective fiction, “look for the woman” means to look for the source of mayhem to solve the mystery… This is exactly what we’ve done – look for la femme behind the camera to bring you the most memorable films made by women from France and beyond.

When a young woman arrives at veterinary college, her primary desire is to fit in, to follow in the footsteps of a proud family tradition. But when rookie hazing rituals force her to taste forbidden fruit (specifically, raw rabbit liver), the devout vegetarian discovers previously suppressed appetites. […] Described by the director as “a modern ancient tragedy about too much love”, Raw is a gleefully Grimm 21st-century fairytale, subversively told from within the walls of a brutalist gingerbread house. 

Trigger warning: Violent and disturbing images dealing with themes of cannibalism and body horror. 

With a complimentary glass of Bourgogne Louis Jadot. Enter a chance to win Sofitel’s Le Bar gift certificate at this screening!

Post-screening discussion with Nick Davis, Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies at Northwestern University. Series curated by Nick Davis, Aimée Laberge and Paprika Bonnin-Occansey

* Entrée Libre for students with ID on-site/.edu addresses online. High school, college or university.

About Julia Ducournau

Julia Ducournau was born in Paris in 1983. She attended the famous French film school La Fémis and studied screenwriting, and graduated in 2008. She released her first short film, Junior, in 2011, and it won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival the same year.Her first feature film is 2016’s Raw, which won the Sutherland Award for Best First Feature at the London Film Festival and is considered a contender for the “best horror movie of the decade” by Rolling Stone. In 2021, Ducournau’s sophomore feature Titane was awarded the coveted Palme d’Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival where it had its world premiere.  

She’s loved writing since childhood, beginning with poems and stories. Her attraction to gory stories dates back to her sixth birthday, when she saw the film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on the sly, and to reading her parents’ medical textbooks. She also cites the discovery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Extraordinary Stories as a determining influence.

Trailer here