Julia Roberts is glad After The Hunt has people talking at reportedly tense Venice panel

Luca Guadagnino’s new film After The Hunt premiered this morning at the Venice International Film Festival, but it’s already generating its share of discourse. According to Julia Roberts, that’s precisely what Guadagnino and the rest of the team intended. “If making this movie does anything, getting everybody to talk to each other is the most exciting thing that I think we could accomplish,” she said at a post-screening press conference that Variety dubbed “tense.” 

After The Hunt follows Roberts’ character, a college professor, who finds herself in a different tense scenario. Her mentee (Ayo Edebiri) has just accused a beloved professor (Andrew Garfield) of assaulting her, while Garfield’s character claims she’s lying. This sort of subject matter is obviously a hot-button issue right now, but AP reports that the film “does not offer easy or simple resolutions.” It’s right there in the film’s tagline: “Not everything is supposed to make you comfortable.”

Roberts echoed this philosophy when a journalist at the conference claimed that the movie had “caused controversy” among viewers who felt that it “revives old arguments” about the #MeToo movement and believing women. “Not to be disagreeable because it’s not in my nature, but the thing you said that I love is it ‘revives old arguments,'” Roberts responded. “I don’t necessarily think it’s reviving just an argument of women being pitted against each other or not supporting each other. There’s a lot of old arguments that get rejuvenated in this movie in a way that does create conversation.”