Show Notes
Mike talks with French director Quarxx about The Ones Who Grieve (2026), in which a mysterious plague called the Black Veil and a father’s religious cruelty turn out to be the same disease.
Quarxx came to filmmaking through a decade as a painter before ever picking up a camera, and this is his first script written with a co-author, novelist Frédéric Soulié, after years of collaborations that never clicked. He reunites actors Thierry Frémont and Zélie Rixhon ten years after they played an unhealthily entangled pair in his debut All the Gods in the Sky — only now she’s grown into the role that reverses their dynamic. The film’s plague victims wear masks designed and sculpted from scratch for the production, a deliberate swerve away from standard zombie iconography toward something that isn’t dangerous, just hungry and discarded.
Made on what Quarxx calls the lowest budget of his career after French funders balked at the material, the film premiered this year at Fantastic Fest following festival stops across Europe.
.Follow Quarxx on Instagram for updates on his next film.
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