It's been five years since French filmmaker Julia Ducournau wowed audiences with her acclaimed horror debut Raw, and now we finally have a trailer for her sophomore film Titane, which is premiering at the Cannes Film Festival next month.
Ducournau's Titane is competing for the prestigious Palme d'Or award at Cannes, a step up after Raw debuted at critics’ Week back in 2016. With its first trailer, Titane becomes one of the most anticipated movies of the year despite us knowing very little about it. What we do know is that the film stars Agathe Rousselle and Vincent Lindon, and follows a long-lost child who returns home suddenly, before a long nightmare turns into something more sinister.
The teaser doesn't show much, except for a moody and intense thriller involving cars, bright neon lights, and lots of metal. In fact, U.S. distributor, NEON, only released the vaguest of synopsis for the film:
"TITANE: A metal highly resistant to heat and corrosion, with high tensile strength alloys, often used in medical prostheses due to its pronounced biocompatibility."
Raw is one of the best horror debuts of the past few years, right up there with The Witch and The Babadook, so it's exciting to see that Titane offers an entirely different experience, albeit a similarly mysterious and violent one.
Though we don't know much more about the film's plot, Cineuropa revealed some details last year:
“Written by the director, the script opens on an airport where custom inspectors pick up a young man with a bruised face. He claims his name to be Adrien Legrand, a child who disappeared ten years ago. For Vincent, his father, this marks the end of a long nightmare, and he brings him home. Simultaneously, a series of gruesome murders places the region under pressure. Alexia, model in a car showroom, has all the characteristics of the ideal victim…”
Titane will make its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival next month, while NEON will premiere the film in the U.S. at a later date. You can watch the trailer below.