Julia Roberts won her first Oscar for “Erin Brockovich” in 2001 – in the role of a single assistant assistant who moves into the fight against an apparently overpowering energy company as part of a class lawsuit. A heroine, as she is in the book, based on a real model: Such roles are particularly well received by Oscar voters-after all, they not only vote for an acting performance, but also for the praiseworthy deeds of the protagonist. Exactly a quarter of a century `The once earning actress in the world was once again acted as the best leading actress for another Oscar in the run -up to her latest film …
… However, this time she would have to rely solely on the appreciation of her talent, because her thoroughly ambivalent figure from “After the Hunt” does not want to be supported without sagging. On the American poster is at the top “Not everything is supposed to make you comfortable” (translated accordingly: “Not everything is there so that you feel comfortable”). This slogan is primarily aimed at a (supposedly) too soft and self-related generation of students at the American elite universities. At the same time, this can also be understood as a warning to potential cinema goers, because “Challengers” director Luca Guadagnino is guaranteed not to make it particularly easy or even right.
Alma (Julia Roberts) and her professor colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield) maintain a very familiar to intimate way of dealing with each other-until the allegations of rape drive a wedge between them.
Alma Olsson (Julia Roberts) is a philosophy professor at the Elite University Yale – and is about to finally get the long -awaited professorship for life. But then one at night suddenly her howling doctor Maggie Price (“The Bear” star Ayo Edebiri) stands in the hallway-and reports how she was not only brought home by her colleague Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield) after a party at Alma, but was also sexually attacked there.
Instead of immediately securing all the conceivable support, the professor hesitates – and less because she does not believe Maggie, but above all to break everything shortly before the finish. In addition, an event from Alma's youth seems that she has apparently not processed in spite of her psychotherapist husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg) to also play a central importance in her actions …
Cinema is rare so much
On the German poster, the slogan, which is actually difficult to translate, was replaced by the simple thriller-Tagline “Who says the truth”. But even if this question is of course in the room due to the opposing stories of Maggie and Hank, it is not only unequal, it also passes the actual topic: “After the Hunt” is exciting over long distances like a psychological thriller, but not because of the search for a possible truth, but because the consistently changing figures are so incredibly packaging.
For a cinema protagonist, Alma even looks surprisingly passive for a long time if she doesn't want to lean too far out of the window in any of the directions. But what some film meant the end is becoming the event thanks to Julia Roberts' enthroned performance. If her student later vaguely vividly spell the opinion that she is only with a non-binary person to make herself more interesting, you really stop. Did that really say that, of all people, the now not exactly known roles. In the meantime, almost automatically is at least briefly thinking about whether the universal “Pretty Woman” star may not have to be canceled.
Luca Guadagnino and his cameraman Malik Hassan Sayeed always choose unusual image sections for “after the Hunt”.
But then you would have to clear Luca Guadagnino (“Suspiria”, “Queer”) and Nora Garrett, who has previously been working as an actress and is now presenting her debut as a screenwriter-and in this case that is very well meant as praise: “After the Hunt” is not based on a specific case, but on general reflections on academic power and #metoo culture. The duo analyzes the university operations from the wedding of the Safe Spaces to – after a late time jump – for the jerky countermovement at the beginning of the second term of the second term of President Donald Trump with great transparency, but without – or at least without a easily decoding – agenda.
Completely freed from the fear of leaving all sides directly, they encounter the stuck echo chamber debates in the comment columns with adults, damaged, multi-layered figures, which always challenge you again. Really nobody is an obvious sympathy or an obvious sympathizer: Even Michael Stuhlbarg, who plays an apparently perfect husband in “Call Me by your name”, who puts two tablets against the hangover on the dessert every morning, at some point proves to be jealous of his classical music to the attack.
Conclusion: A mercilessly bubbly drama with such uncomfortable, opposing and multi-layered figures, as you can hardly experience them in the mainstream strong cinema since the 1970s-often at least as exciting as a thriller, does not let go of an “after the hunt” even with the insertion of the crash.
We saw “After the Hunt” at the Venice Film Festival 2025, where he celebrated his world premiere out of competition.