Luca Guadagnino isn’t one to shy away from thorny psychosexual dynamics. The Call Me By Your Name director revels in loaded silences, charged glances, and forbidden relationships. His latest film, After the Hunt, more than delivers with an intense, twisty plot: the drama stars Julia Roberts as a college professor confronted by a secret from her past when her star mentee (Ayo Edebiri) makes an allegation against her colleague and friend (Andrew Garfield). The film’s apt tagline reads: “Not everything is supposed to make you comfortable.”
Below, everything to know about After the Hunt:
Who is in the After the Hunt Cast?
Roberts, Garfield, and Edebiri lead the main cast, and are joined by Chloë Sevigny and Michael Stuhlbarg.
Edebiri and Sevigny in After the Hunt
Guadagnino has called After the Hunt the “best performance” of Roberts’s career—a high bar to clear indeed.
Roberts in After the Hunt
As for Edebiri, the director recently told W that he discovered the actor not on The Bear (which he hadn’t even seen), but in her high school comedy Bottoms.
“I had seen Ayo in Bottoms,” he said. “And I immediately thought, Who is she? Where is she? I needed to meet her!”
He continued to sing Edebiri’s praises, adding, “Ayo is a movie star in the real sense of bigness, and cinema, and excitement. She has a commitment toward performance that you rarely find now. She absolutely commands your gaze. She’s funny and she’s extremely beautiful—and that is a very rare combination.”
Edebiri in After the Hunt
What has Guadagnino said about the film?
IndieWire reports that during a “WTF with Marc Maron” podcast episode, Guadagnino said the film is “one of my very rare movies” that is not “about sexuality or love.” Instead, “It’s a very timely movie for where we are now, in terms of the society and the division in society and the extreme positions that we can have vis-a-vis an opinion in a way. It’s about what happens in the milieu of academia between younger and older people and the idea of consent. I can tell you that it’s very loaded. I can tell you that the movie is very provocative, but not in a stupid way, but I would say in a very articulate way.”
Is there an After the Hunt trailer?
The first trailer for After the Hunt dropped on Wednesday, July 16. The two-minute clip shows Roberts, Edebiri, and Garfield forming cozy relationships in a picturesque academic setting, before things get heated when Edebiri accuses Garfield of “crossing the line” with her one night. Garfield defends himself, saying that the allegation is a form of revenge for pointing out that Edebiri was guilty of plagiarism. The clip also teases Edebiri’s crush on (or is it obsession with?) Roberts.
Watch the trailer, below:
Who wrote the script?
While Guadagnino has worked with screenwriter (and husband of Celine Song) Justin Kuritzkes for his past two films (Challengers and Queer), first-time writer Nora Garrett penned After the Hunt.
When is the After the Hunt release date?
After the Hunt will have a limited theatrical release in New York and LA on October 10, followed by a wide release on October 17, 2025.
