The movies of Coralie Fargeat are not for the fainthearted: Blood and gore play an absolutely central role.

There was so much of it in her body-horror movie “Revenge” (2017) — her first full-length feature — that, on set in Morocco, extra quantities of fake blood had to be constantly prepared using ingredients shipped over from France.

Fargeat’s new title “The Substance” — starring Margaret Qualley, Demi Moore and Dennis Quaid — promises to be no less violent and is one of 22 contenders for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, which begins on Tuesday.

Fargeat, who was born in Paris, took up filmmaking from a very young age, making little movies of her toys, and developed a passion for genre movies thanks to her grandfather, who let the 12- or 13-year-old Coralie watch films her parents considered too violent: the “Rambo” series, “RoboCop” and “The Fly.”

Later, while finishing her university studies at Sciences Po in Paris, she noticed a film shoot in the university courtyard one day and asked the assistant director for an internship. She interned on the set of his next movie, and spent the next two years doing other internships to learn the ropes.

Releasing a number of critically acclaimed shorts, she presented “Revenge” at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017 and got plenty of attention.

Fargeat spoke of her Cannes competition title, her love of violent cinema, and her feminist agenda in a video interview from her Paris apartment. The conversation has been edited and condensed.

How does it feel to be in the competition at Cannes with your second film?

For any filmmaker, Cannes is a kind of myth, the temple of world cinema. I am very honored and very moved. All of the directors that I grew up with and admired had world premieres at the Cannes Festival: David Cronenberg, David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino.

My first time at the festival I was camping with a friend. We managed to snag tickets to Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive,” and it was staggering — a screening I’ll never forget.

Can you describe your festival contender, “The Substance”?

It’s a feminist take on the body horror movie and quite different from “Revenge,” though there are also lots of similarities. It’s a genre movie. Genre movies are a terrific way to talk about societal issues.

What I like to do in my films is to create other universes: create my own world, with my own rules and codes, and push everything to an extreme in a very visceral way, in a way that’s very true to who I am.

That’s why I wanted to become a director. I was very bored in real life and found watching movies absolutely fantastic. I could escape everyday life, which I felt quite unadjusted to.

Will we be seeing extreme violence and gore in “The Substance” as well?

Yes, but in a very different way, because the plot has nothing to do with “Revenge.”

When it comes to violence in the movies, what I’m interested in is not torture porn, or to show pain just for the sake of it. There’s always a kind of distance and remove from the realism of the violence. My movies are set in very colorful, very visual settings, that look almost like Pop environments. The violence is so extreme that there are moments of humor in it. The excessive nature of the violence takes us away from a sense of this being total realism.

Why are you drawn to extreme violence, a genre that maybe doesn’t come naturally to women? And I don’t mean that in a sexist way.

A lot of our behaviors and attitudes are shaped by our environment, by what we had access to and were exposed to. Thanks to my grandfather, I discovered movies that I wasn’t allowed to see at home with my parents because they were too violent.

In my childhood and teenage years, I found everything that boys had access to more cool and fun. I was extremely affected by that, and felt this inequality from a very young age.

There were stereotypes about what girls were allowed to do, what we had to look like, how we behaved: We had to be delicate, smile and be nice. “The Substance” is very much about what, as a woman, we have to conform to and how it impacts our life socially.

So your movies are, literally, about revenge?

Completely: revenge over the woman’s body and the way it is perceived.

A boy who walks around in the public space has a neutral body; no one will look at him. A woman in the public space is a different story: the way she’s seen and viewed, the way she’s treated if she behaves or dresses in this or that way, if she’s this or that age.

There’s an extreme difference that creates enormous inequality and an extreme violence that we women are confronted with daily. The metaphorical violence of “The Substance” reflects the violence of this everyday inequality, which women continue to face.

Your movie coincided with a wave of sexual misconduct allegations against the Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. Did the #MeToo scandal help the movie and its reception?

Absolutely, there was a crazy overlap between fiction and reality. “Revenge” was all of a sudden an incredible illustration of the news headlines. And the news headlines made it much more accessible to people who wouldn’t otherwise have decoded the themes within it.

Cannes has been slow to promote female talent: As recently as in 2012, there were zero women in the main competition. What are your thoughts?

I am 100 percent in favor of affirmative action. You can’t change 3,000 years of habits and inequality of access between men and women overnight — without an active desire to be proactive about reversing the status quo. The numbers are still unequal. The shift has to be forced through; otherwise things are just going to continue as they are.