Imagine, it’s one of your first full feature acting roles, you’re 18 and playing a first year at veterinary school. So far so good. Then your director asks you to drop to the ground and feast on your fictional sister’s severed finger, possessed like a dog. Sure, studio tricks mean it’s made of sugar and is probably quite delicious if you close your eyes, but still, an unconventional request. Nothing seems to faze Garance Marieller though, “It’s just a kebab!” She laughs when she sees my face draw pale with nausea at the memory of the scene.

The Parisian teen is achingly cool and unassuming while I try to grill her about all the cringe-inducing moments in the French-Belgian horror, Raw. Starring as Justine, the newcomer grabbed attention under Julia Ducournau’s direction across festivals worldwide last summer. Not least for the occasional fainting viewer at previews. (I pre-warned my comrades at the screening I attended that I was expecting to do the same, although I’m proud to say I made it through).

“Everything is false,” says Marillier, far cooler than me, once I finish delivering an overwhelmed monologue to her about how squeamish I am. “It’s cinema.” Citing Hitchcock’s Vertigo as the first film to have struck a chord, I shouldn’t be surprised by her composure.

Working with Ducournau on short, Junior back in 2011, as a “tomboy who starts to have stomach ache, and then she starts to lose her skin and becomes a girl” the creative duo have had time to hone their surrealist outlook before their simultaneous breakout feature.

Raw centres around the infamous tradition of hazing: humiliating rituals and initiations which reached such outrageous levels in France, their practice was made illegal in 1998. A twisted coming-of-age tale, inspecting sex, friendship, sisterhood and, well, cannibalism, the thing that lingers with you longest is how much you can relate to the film. “[Raw’s] not like every other horror film,” Marillier insists with a quiet confidence. “There’s a universal story behind it.”

And what would she say, if someone was to argue the film’s graphic scenes are shocking for the sake of being shocking, I ask Marillier? “Fuck you,” she sings, rounded off with a melodic “hmph”. “They would have misunderstood it, they’ll have missed the main point.” I have to agree. A feature packed with juxtapositions — a familiar but alien experience, shown through sickening yet beautiful visuals — Raw will have you asking too many questions to take the story on it’s glistening, fleshy surface.

Raw is released nationwide on 7th April.