In Yale’s hallowed halls, where prestige meets pressure, Julia Roberts has starred in After the Hunt, a film wrapped in power plays, secrets, and simmering tensions. This is not just about scandal; rather, it dives into the messy terrain of love and forgiveness, probing what binds us and what breaks us. The film invites viewers to peer beyond surface truths, into the raw, tangled hearts that drive human drama, sparking questions that linger long after the credits roll.

Forgiveness is the song that plays on repeat in After the Hunt—daring us to listen closely to what lies beneath the noise.

Julia Roberts addressed the New York Film Festival about After the Hunt's plot being much more than a harrowing headline. She talked about a song that "plays in this film seven times...", going on to explain how it is, in fact, symbolic of the story’s emotional core based on"love and forgiveness". The film dives deep into the complex emotions in tangled relationships, for which Roberts credited director Luca Guadagnino for having guided the cast to embody these layered human truths. At the same time, the actress, enamoured by Nora Garrett’s "beautiful story," steered towards compelling a peek into our true selves beneath the facades we wear and sparking conversations of empathy and self-understanding.

After the Hunt thrives on ambiguity. Julia Roberts and her co-stars, Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri, embraced the film’s refusal to hand out easy answers. The story’s tension centers on navigation through conflicting accounts wrapped in doubt, trust, and pain, making the audience confront uncomfortable questions about loyalty and belief in an era that craves certainty. It had, in fact, been orchestrated to have people come "out of the theater talking about it. That is how we wanted it to feel", Roberts had said at the Venice Film Festival in August 2025, in the film's defense. 

Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, and Andrew Garfield Stir the Pot with a Psychological Drama at NYFF 2025

In a world obsessed with black and white, After the Hunt dares to live in the frustratingly beautiful shades of gray.

Luca Guadagnino and Nora Garrett's psychological twister After the Hunt follows Alma Olsson, a respected Yale philosophy professor whose life unravels when a graduate student accuses her close colleague Hank of sexual misconduct. The film explores power, privilege, and accountability amid academia’s rarefied corridors. Alma wrestles with loyalties and moral dilemmas while confronting her own past as professional and personal stakes threaten to fracture everything she holds dear.

Julia Roberts anchors After the Hunt with a fierce, nuanced portrayal of Alma. The film is not about delivering verdicts but about unpacking the complexities of human hearts tangled in trauma and forgiveness. With a stellar cast and Guadagnino’s nuanced direction, it challenges viewers to move beyond black-and-white judgments. Roberts hopes the film sparks real conversations, reminding us that the lost art of dialogue may be worth rediscovering.

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