Julia Ducournau’s first film is available to… | Little White Lies

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Julia Ducournau’s first film is avail­able to watch for free

22 Jul 2021

Words by Hannah Strong

Close-up image of a person wearing glasses making a shushing gesture with their finger over their lips.
Close-up image of a person wearing glasses making a shushing gesture with their finger over their lips.
Before she was a Palme d’or win­ner, Ducour­nau made a creepy lit­tle short about a teenag­er under­go­ing a strange transformation.

Julia Ducor­nau is very much the woman of the hour at the moment, hav­ing bagged the top hon­ours at the 74th Cannes Film Fes­ti­val with her body hor­ror night­mare Titane. Only the sec­ond woman to ever win the Palme d’Or, we’re cer­tain Ducour­nau has a bright future ahead of her, and we can’t wait to see what twist­ed night­mare she brings us next. But in the spir­it of cel­e­brat­ing, the kind folks at UniFrance have made Ducournau’s first-ever film – her short Junior – avail­able to watch on Youtube, absolute­ly free of charge.

Made after she grad­u­at­ed from the French film school La Fémis, Junior stars Garance Mar­il­li­er in the tit­u­lar role, who was just 13 at the time and would go on to take the cen­tral role in Raw (she also appears in a sup­port­ing role in Titane). The film was select­ed for Semaine de la Cri­tique at Cannes in 2011, where Raw would also play in 2016 and receive the FIPRESCI Prize.

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The themes in Junior will be famil­iar to any­one who has seen Ducournau’s lat­er work, exam­in­ing the phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal impact of puber­ty upon women, and the grotesque meta­mor­pho­sis of the human body. If you can’t wait for Titane (which will be released by Alti­tude in the UK and Neon in the US), this should tide you over – check out the full short film below.

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