Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt” to Open New York Film Festival
Last week, the official trailer to Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt” was released on Youtube, garnering just over 9 million views since then. The Letterboxd description of the film describes the plot as “a college professor finding herself at a personal and professional crossroads when a star pupil levels an accusation against one of her colleagues, and a dark secret from her own past threatens to come to light.”
The film, starring Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, and Chloë Sevigny, is set to come out exclusively in theaters this October, and it has now been set to open the 2025 New York Film Festival, taking place from September 26th to October 13th. Last year’s opener of the New York Film Festival was RaMell Ross’ “Nickel Boys,” a Best Picture nominee at the 2025 Oscars, and past openers have been iconic films including David Fincher’s “The Social Network” and Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction.” Dennis Lim, the artistic director of the New York Film Festival, says the film is “brilliantly acted and crafted” and hypes it up as “something rare in contemporary cinema: a complex, grown-up movie with a lot on its mind that also happens to be a deeply satisfying piece of entertainment.”
While the New York Film Festival will be its North American premiere, “After the Hunt” will first premiere at Venice Film Festival on August 27th, so more opinions will be rolling in at that time. After two great Luca Guadagnino movies came out last year – “Challengers” in April 2024 and “Queer” in November 2024 – that both ended up being completely snubbed by the Oscars, some cinema fans wonder if this film could be one a project gets him the awards buzz and nominations like he got from “Call Me By Your Name.” But no matter what buzz it gets, the film is shaping up to be another wonderful project from Guadagnino.
Featured image by Gu Bra via pexels.com