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New doctor Margot enters a prestigious French emergency department where ruthless productivity demands push young workers beyond breaking point. When she begins sweating blood and notices similar symptoms in her peers, burnout appears to be becoming something physically transformative.
Directors: Marion Le Corroller
Writers: Marion Le Corroller, Thomas Pujol
Sonia Faïdi, Stefan Crepon, Kim Higelin, Sami Outalbali, Karin Viard, Mara Taquin
Cinematographer: Guillaume Schiffman
Editing: Jérôme Eltabet
Music: ROB
Distributed by: N/A
Release Date: N/A
Platform: MIFF 2026

We’re using the phrase “this place will take a piece of flesh from you” in the most literal way.

Are we all working ourselves into an early grave? Probably. Seems that way, at least in 2026, when Species was shown at MIFF 2026. And this seems to be the subject at the heart of this body-horror feature debut from Marion Le Coroller. The opening scene, an employee of the month several months in a row, turning violent on an admittedly turd of a customer, sets the tone: violence and subject matter, all in visceral brutality. 

Margot (Mara Taquin) is just starting as an intern at an ER. She’s excited to learn and make a difference. She’s also rather naive about the world she’s about to step into, where her leader/manager — I’m not quite sure of the official job title here — expects her students to handle 25 patients per shift and will work them to the bone. All in the matter of making them into better doctors, of course. When Margot first arrives at her lodgings here, she should have taken the odd blood on her bed, and suicide prevention bars on her window of things to come. 

Margot’s first few days are tumultuous. She makes one friend in Louis (Sami Outalbali), who’s not too fond of being worked to the bone, and plans to move to a quieter countryside ER after finishing his time. She also meets Pauline (Kim Higelin), a star student who comes from a family of successful doctors. A ranking for the role of the teacher’s second-in-command becomes available, in competition with a literal headboard. Margot is sitting at the bottom. She’s slow on her feet and spends too much time with patients. She’s not working in an ER; she’s trying to be a doctor—caring and connecting. One of her patients on her first day also shows weird acne-like pigmentation but runs off before Margot can finish her tests. Instead of moving on, it begins to bother her. 

In the days following, Margot begins to have odd medical issues of her own, though she initially attempts to cover them all up. It starts as odd bleeding in places where there are no wounds, to waking up in a bloodbath, to gnarly wounds forming on her body. How Margot deals with these, in attempts to hide them all, appease her boss, keep her job, and “keep it all together,” is at times rather gruesome. The body horror here seems to follow in the footsteps of prominent French horror director Julia Ducournau. We’re using the phrase “this place will take a piece of flesh from you” in the most literal way.

The ending of Species didn’t give me much hope either, but I guess that could be the point. We’re all going to burn ourselves out at this rate: a big warm shrug and good luck to the future generations. 

[Dylan attended a screening thanks to the Melbourne International Film Festival]