As the fall festival lineup continues to take shape, a major piece has now slid into place. Film at Lincoln Center has announced Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt will open the 63rd New York Film Festival, making its North American premiere on Friday, September 26. The festival takes place through October 13.
Here’s the NYFF synopsis: “In his razor-sharp new drama, the prolific Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name, NYFF55; Queer, NYFF62) plunges with refreshing abandon into the murky seas of contemporary morality—and gives Julia Roberts one of the most complex and gratifying starring roles of her career. Roberts embodies chilly, seemingly self-assured Yale philosophy professor Alma Olsson, whose comfortable professional career and domestic life with her mercurial husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg) are thrown into chaos after her PhD candidate protégée Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) accuses Alma’s longtime colleague and friend Henrik (Andrew Garfield) of sexual assault. As a result, the air of rarefied academic privilege on campus begins to dissolve, and Alma must navigate minefields of gender, sexuality, race, and institutional power, all while trying to reconcile her own difficult choices with the demons of her past. From a trenchant, tightly plotted script by Nora Garrett, and with the aid of a sensational cast (also including Chloë Sevigny as Kim, a colleague of Alma’s), Guadagnino teases out a genuine provocation with no easy answers, inquiring where our true selves lie when every decision we make is thrown into the court of public opinion. An Amazon MGM Studios release.”
“I have always found the New York Film Festival to be an arbiter of global cinema. For over 60 years it has been a festival that makes audiences open their minds and hearts to the most daring and compelling global cinema from both established and emerging filmmakers,” said Luca Guadagnino. “To be invited to open the 63rd edition is a tremendous responsibility and honor. I, alongside the incredible cast and crew and our companions at Amazon MGM Studios who made After the Hunt possible, am elated and thrilled to bring to New York our tale of morality and power. My most heartfelt thanks to Dennis Lim and the singular NYFF team.”
“We are excited to open this year’s festival with Luca Guadagnino’s latest, which confirms his status as one of the most versatile risk-takers working today,” said Dennis Lim, Artistic Director, New York Film Festival. “Brilliantly acted and crafted, After the Hunt is 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.”
See the trailer below and learn about NYFF tickets and passes here.