Cannes film festival attendees were stunned as a member of the audience was carried out of a premiere on a stretcher last night.
Crowds had turned out to see the debut screening of Alpha, the latest ‘body horror’ thriller by award-winning Titane director, Julia Ducournau.
With Ducournau in the audience, the film was briefly interrupted about an hour into its runtime to attend to an undisclosed medical emergency.
Attendees on the balcony were seen waving their phone torches in the darkness as they noticed something was wrong.
Some audience members called out for a doctor and asked for the screening to be paused, Variety reports.
But as paramedics arrived on scene to remove the ailing guest, the 128-minute feature carried on regardless.
The film received a 11-and-a-half minute standing ovation after its premiere on Monday
The film follows the tale of a troubled teenager who returns from school with a tattoo. An infectious new disease then spreads, turning the infected into marble
The emergency is not thought to be related to the content of the body horror film, which had not shown anything graphic by that point.
MailOnline has contacted Cannes Film Festival for comment.
Ducournau appeared emotional in the front row as the audience offered a nearly 12-minute standing ovation at the end of the screening.
Speaking in French, she thanked all those who supported the project, saying the team ‘put a lot into the film’.
Ducournau, one of only three women to have ever won the Palme d’Or top prize, is held in high esteem following her last directorial effort, Titane.
Alpha follows the tale of a troubled teenager (Mélissa Boros) and her single mother (Golshifteh Farahani) whose ‘world collapses after Alpha one day returns from school with a tattoo on her arm’, per the Cannes synopsis.
An apparent AIDS allegory, a deadly virus passed through shared needle use then results in the skin of the infected turning to marble.
Alpha is later cast out by classmates worried about the spread of the infectious new disease.
The film features British-French actor Emma Mackey, who burst onto screens in 2019 as wild child Maeve in Sex Education.
Alpha was received well by audiences at the film festival on Monday. But not all critics enjoyed the showing.
Geoffrey Macnab, writing for The Independent, judged the film a ‘confused mess’. rated two stars out of five.
‘At the late night press screening I attended, the walkouts seemed prompted more by weariness and ennui than squeamishness or disgust,’ he wrote.
Mélissa Boros stars as Alpha in the eponymous film, to be released in France on August 20
The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw gave the film one star out of five, judging it ‘the tonally inept tale of a girl with a dodgy tattoo and a disease that turns people to marble’.
Jordan Mintzer, writing for the Hollywood Reporter, said the film ‘felt like three or four movies at once, all told simultaneously and as loudly as possible’.
Peter Debruge, for Variety, deemed the film a ‘tortured AIDS allegory’ and ‘rotten follow-up’ to Titane.
Cannes Film Festival continues until May 24. Alpha will be released in France on August 20.
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