Challengers director Luca Guadagnino swaps tennis courts for college classrooms in his star-studded psychological thriller After the Hunt, with a trailer out today.
The acclaimed director of Call Me By Your Name, Bones and All, and Queer teams up with Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, and Andrew Garfield for his latest project, which examines a #MeToo scandal on an elite college campus. Prior Guadagnino collaborators Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloë Sevigny also star, and the film is written by Nora Garrett.
Roberts plays Alma, a well-respected college professor whose personal and professional lives are turned upside down when her student Maggie (Edebiri) accuses her colleague Hank (Garfield) of sexual assault. The ensuing backlash becomes a campus-wide storm of he-said, she-said. Hank counters Maggie’s accusation with claims that she’s been plagiarizing her college work, and Maggie threatens to expose a dark secret from Alma’s past. The fact that both Maggie and Hank seem to have feelings for Alma further muddies the water of her reaction.
In addition to exploring the aftermath of Maggie’s allegations, After the Hunt also studies the generational differences between the college’s professors and their students. The film’s first trailer opens with Hank telling Maggie, “All your generation, you’re scared of saying the wrong thing. When did offending someone become the preeminent cardinal sin?”
Her response? “Maybe it’s around the same time your generation started making sweeping generalizations about ours?”
If that conversation is anything to go by, we’re in for far more inter-generational conflict — and more of Guadagnino’s sumptuous filmmaking — in the full film.
After the Hunt hits New York and Los Angeles theaters Oct. 10, and expands nationwide Oct. 17.
