Canadian Premiere
Margot is a young doctor beginning her career as an intern at a notoriously demanding French emergency room. The head of her department, Hélène, is a revered hard-ass who pushes her staff to their limits and expects the best in return. After a bumpy first day and a series of mysterious cases involving young people with bizarre symptoms, Margot wakes one morning to find her body and bedsheets covered in blood. Her symptoms appear to worsen with stress, and as the pressures of the job mount, strange lesions begin spreading across her torso.
Joining a new wave of French female filmmakers embracing body horror, Marion Le Corroller turns the anxieties of the modern workplace into something viscerally physical. With its gloriously gruesome skin-tearing effects, Species takes aim at a work culture that pushes young people to the breaking point in pursuit of success. Burnout becomes mutation and, in the grand tradition of Cronenberg’s New Flesh, the body rebels against what the mind has learned to endure.
Supported by
Media Partner
Mara Taquin, Karin Viard, Kim Higelin, Sami Outalbali, Stefan Crepon, Sonia Faïdi
France/Belgium
2026
In French with English subtitles
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Producer
Carole Lambert
Screenwriter
Marion Le Corroller, Thomas Pujol
Cinematography
Guillaume Schiffman
Editor
Jérôme Eltabet
Production Design
Anne-Sophie Delseries
Original Music
ROB
Marion Le Corroller
After studying finance and international business, Marion Le Corroller began her career in film production and worked on the development of several feature films. She wrote and directed several short films, including Dieu n’est plus médecin, which was selected for numerous international film festivals as well as the César Awards in 2021. In 2024, she shot Melted Doll, a body horror short film supported by the CNC and France 2. At the same time, she developed her first feature film, Species, with Windy Production, which will receive a French theatrical release in 2026.
Filmography: Build 2 Kill (2023)
Altered States
See more films in this series
Jim Queen
When far-right activists infect gay influencer Jim Queen with a drug that turns him straight, he must join forces with a closeted follower to cure his ailment. Jim Queen is a film unafraid to skewer gay “body fascism” and bigoted conservatism alike.
Species
Species follows Margot, a young doctor who wakes covered in blood as the pressures of a demanding French ER take a physical toll. As lesions spread across her body, workplace burnout transforms into skin-tearing body horror.
Image: © ARP Sélection Trésor Films Windy Production
The Peril at Pincer Point
A hapless sound recordist sails to an island seeking a missing girl and the perfect sound for a monster’s roar, but faces a phantom pirate and giant crabs. Handmade and hilarious, The Peril at Pincer Point revels in the scrappy joy of indie filmmaking.
Gasmask
Part post-apocalyptic fable, part film essay, Harry Cepka's Gasmask is an enigmatic meditation on memory, ritual, and art. Evoking Chris Marker's La Jetée, it asks what remains of cinema after the world that created it has disappeared.
Freaks Part II
Freaks Part II follows Mary and her daughter Chloe as they flee the Abnormal Defence Force through a country where those with powers are hunted and identified through telltale blood-red tears. A tense, emotionally grounded second chapter.
Image: © Kailey Schwerman - Elevation Pictures
Family Fears Another Night of Terror
Night after night, a family of four is tormented by an unseen presence inside their home — or so it seems. Family Fears Another Night of Terror transforms the aesthetics of a late-night television special into an analogue nightmare.
Midnight Momo
Kunga, a waiter at a Queens momo shop, finds himself trapped in a loop of the final minutes of his shift. Midnight Momo is a frenetic, distinctly Tibetan American indie comedy that puts a working-class spin on the Buddhist cycle of suffering and rebirth.
Death Has No Master
When Caro returns to Venezuela to sell her late father’s cacao plantation, she finds the family mansion occupied by its former staff, who have no intention of leaving. After legal action proves ineffectual, Caro decides to dispense justice herself.
Ugly Cry
When her Ugly Cry costs an aspiring actor her dream role, she takes desperate measures in pursuit of perfection. A cheeky injection of dark humour and delirium, this genre-bending psychological thriller takes a clever jab at internet-age beauty standards.