Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri vie for Julia Roberts' trust in After The Hunt trailer

Luca Guadagnino's new film is a dark, timely thriller about power and privilege.

Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri vie for Julia Roberts' trust in After The Hunt trailer
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Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri, and Julia Roberts are in some sort of triangle in Luca Guadagnino’s After The Hunt, but it’s definitely not one borne out of love. The trailer for the latest film from the Challengers director tells audiences what kind of waters it’s wading in right from the jump. “All your generation, you’re scared of saying the wrong things. When did offending someone become the preeminent cardinal sin?” Hank (Andrew Garfield), a beloved teacher, fires at Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), a star pupil, during an academic mixer. “Maybe it’s around the same time your generation started making sweeping generalizations about ours,” Maggie retorts.

This particular debate seems relatively civil, but what will unfold between Hank, Maggie, and Alma (Julia Roberts)—a professor and the object of their mutual obsession—is anything but. One night, Maggie shows up at Alma’s door visibly distraught, and claims that Hank (Garfield) “crossed the line.” She doesn’t use the word “assaulted” until later, when she claims it’s “just amazing to me, a young Black woman can get assaulted, and all these white people figure out a way to make it about themselves.” Hank, on the other hand, claims he told Maggie he suspected she plagiarized in his class, and her allegations were an “utter fabrication” in response.

According to its official logline, the tense film follows a professor who “finds herself at a personal and professional crossroad when a star student (Edebiri) levels an accusation against one of her colleagues (Garfield), threatening to expose a dark secret from her own past.” 

After The Hunt is 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,” Guadagnino said of the film on the WTF With Marc Maron podcast. “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.”

After The Hunt also stars Michael Stulbarg and Chloë Sevigny, who have a slew of their own opinions about the generational divide and the Way Kids Are These Days. Unfortunately, it seems like the rifts in this one are a little too deep to be patched over by a good game of tennis. 

After The Hunt premieres in New York and LA on October 10, before releasing nationwide October 17. 

 
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