Julia Roberts Is Caught in the Middle of a Campus Scandal in After the Hunt

Luca Guadagnino doesn’t do middle-of-the-road. He makes films that linger under your skin, in your memory, and occasionally, in the headlines. With After the Hunt, the Italian provocateur of Call Me By Your Name, Challengers, and the upcoming Queer, turns his lens toward academia, where reputations, ideals, and generations collide.

His latest starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Ayo Edebiri in the lead lands squarely in a zone that is uncomfortable, and politically barbed. And the intense trailer only make you ask one question what the hell happened on that university campus.

And so this is what we know so far from the trailer that dropped this week- After the Hunt follows a university tenured professor, played by Julia Roberts, navigating the increasingly fraught terrain of generational ethics, cancel culture, and institutional loyalty.

When a former student accuses her long-time colleague (Michael Stuhlbarg) of sexual misconduct, she’s forced into an uncomfortable moral reckoning. Who is that sexual predator? Andrew Garfield, a fellow academic and moral mirror, who challenges her loyalties and her past in unexpected ways.

What follows is a slow-burning moral crisis where past decisions resurface, loyalties are tested, and uncomfortable truths refuse to stay buried.

Andrew Garfield plays a younger academic who walks the fine line between ally and adversary. He plays less of a romantic interest, more as a mirror—one that reflects every compromised choice made in the name of “doing the right thing", while Ayo Edebiri, who plays Sydney Adamu on the show The Bear and rides high on that momentum, and Chloë Sevigny, who feels genetically designed for a Guadagnino film. That cast alone should tell you this is not your typical institutional scandal story. One should expect intense drama for sure.

If you’ve watched Call Me By Your Name or Challengers, you already know Guadagnino’s visual grammar. Long takes. Sunlight with menace and close-ups that feel like confessions. His gift lies in making beauty feel like it’s hiding something—because it usually is.

In After the Hunt, the tension isn’t just plot-driven. It’s atmospheric. Every conversation feels like it could tip into confrontation. Every quiet moment leaves you wondering what’s been left unsaid. There’s no courtroom and no public takedown. Instead, there are closed-door conversations, staff meetings, and dinner parties where everyone is pretending they’re not silently choosing sides. This is a film about the slow disintegration of certainty.

The Roberts Factor

Julia Roberts has built a career playing women we root for. In After the Hunt, Guadagnino hands her something trickier: a character who isn’t easily likeable or easy to judge. It’s the kind of role we rarely see female leads over 50 take on in mainstream cinema—complicated, morally compromised, and possibly wrong.

It’s also very smart casting. Roberts’ public image as America’s sweetheart, queen of the ’90s rom-com—becomes part of the story. Her professor is someone who’s always been admired. Now she’s being questioned, both by others and by herself.

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And she’s not the only one. The whole cast seems to be playing characters with something to hide. Stuhlbarg is in familiar territory as a man who may or may not be guilty of something awful. Garfield’s character is more emotionally ambidextrous—a kind of academic shapeshifter, comfortable speaking in ethics but not always practicing them.

A Culture Clash with Real Stakes

While the release date is yet to be confirmed by is set for October this year, unlike the cancel culture that heavily dominates the university culture in this day and age, After the Hunt isn’t trying to cancel anyone or defend them either. It’s not a film with answers. Instead, it’s about the mess: the generational tension between those who grew up thinking they were progressive and those who now find their version of morality outdated.

There’s a moment in the script (from what’s been leaked) that reportedly draws applause in test screenings as a quiet, unflinching callout that slices through all the intellectual debate. Guadagnino, for all his sensual flair, has always been interested in moments like that are sharp and disarming truths.

Overall, After the Hunt looks ready to provoke and challenge and maybe leave us hanging in the moral ambiguity like a lost child at Costco.