Raw

At first, Justine, a veterinary student, doesn’t eat meat. But then something happens—and the young, innocent woman begins to develop strange, unsettling, and frankly quite repulsive cravings. In her bold yet stylistically assured debut, written from her own script, Ducournau shows no restraint. She plunges a coming-of-age story into blood and viscera, following Justine’s awakening appetite for flesh and sex into the darkest, most primal depths—where animal instincts lurk and humans begin to resemble predators.

“You are what you eat.” In Julia Ducournau’s first feature film, 16-year-old Juliette takes a bite of raw meat. There’s nothing natural about it—she’s a committed vegetarian who wants to become a veterinarian, just like her sister and parents before her. Grave is the original French title, which can be translated as “formative” or “profound.” Ducournau’s films stretch these moments of imprinting, of becoming, across the length of a feature. Who am I? But also: Who can and am I allowed to be—as the heir to my parents, and as part of an oppressively normative society? And ultimately: who shapes whom?