After the Hunt
After the Hunt is a 2025 psychological thriller film directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Nora Garrett. Starring Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Chloë Sevigny, it follows Alma, a college professor caught in a sexual abuse accusation involving one of her students and a colleague.
The film had its world premiere out of competition in the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on August 29, 2025, and was theatrically released in the United States by Amazon MGM Studios on October 10, 2025. The film received mixed reviews from critics, though Roberts's performance received praise.
Plot
In September 2019, Alma Imhoff, a philosophy professor at Yale University, and her therapist husband Frederik Mendelssohn host a dinner party. Alma recently returned to her post after taking an extended medical leave; she experiences frequent bouts of pain and takes prescription medication. In attendance are Hank Gibson, Alma's colleague and best friend, and Maggie Resnick, her top PhD student.Alma and Hank are both up for tenure. Maggie finds a mysterious envelope in the bathroom cupboard containing old mementos and pockets a newspaper clipping from the envelope. Frederik privately opines to Alma that Hank and Maggie are unremarkable and that she is drawn to them only because they greatly admire her. Hank walks Maggie home.
The next day, Maggie is absent from Alma's class. Alma finds Maggie outside her home later that night, and Maggie confides in Alma that Hank sexually assaulted her in her home after she invited him in for a nightcap. Maggie finds Alma insufficiently supportive and leaves. Alma speaks to Hank shortly afterwards, who denies the allegation, saying he asked Maggie for a nightcap after they left Alma's dinner party and that she approached him sexually. He also argues that Maggie is fabricating the incident as an assault because he accused her of plagiarizing her dissertation.
Alma further upsets Maggie by speaking to the dean without her permission. Maggie and Hank separately ask Alma for her support. Alma returns home and notices the newspaper clipping is missing from the envelope, prompting her to burn most of what was in it. The next day, Hank is fired and storms into Alma's classroom, angrily accusing her of not standing up for him to protect her own career. Hank bursts out, and Maggie walks outside. Alma follows Maggie and comforts her, inviting her to dinner that night. Maggie also mentions to Alma that a reporter approached her to talk about the allegation. The following day, Alma goes out for a drink with a colleague of hers, Dr. Kim Sayers, the university psychiatrist, who believes Maggie, while voicing her disdain for how the students' generation treats their problems.
Maggie goes public with her allegation in the Yale Daily News. She also translates the German-language newspaper clipping, revealing that, as a teenager, Alma accused her father's friend Matthias Wolff of raping her but later recanted the accusation. She meets Alma and asks if this is why she reacted the way she did to Maggie's allegation. Alma, angry that Maggie violated her privacy, tells her to leave her alone.
Alma is caught forging a prescription for herself from Kim, and her tenure consideration is paused indefinitely. Afterwards, Alma runs into Maggie on campus and confronts her, making her own accusation of plagiarism, criticizing her work ethic, her mirroring of Alma's mannerisms and dress, her privilege as the child of wealthy Yale donors, and suggests that she is in a performative relationship with her non-binary partner, Alex. Alma further insinuates that no one believes Maggie's allegation against Hank, prompting Maggie to slap her.
Alma retreats to her wharfside vacation apartment and finds Hank sleeping there, having kept the borrowed keys that Alma had lent his sister for a past visit. Both wounded from recent events, they discuss Hank's behavior. While he acknowledges flirting with members of his classes, he again denies that he raped Maggie or that he ever had sex with students, saying the only professional boundary he ever crossed was a past affair with Alma, whom he still harbors feelings for. They share a tender kiss, which he attempts to escalate to sex, despite Alma telling him no multiple times until she shoves him and kicks him out of the apartment.
Alma returns to campus the next day, not realizing Rolling Stone has published an article in which Maggie heavily criticizes how she and Yale have handled Maggie coming forward. Alma is confronted by Alex and a group of other student protestors and collapses as her stomach ulcers perforate.
In the hospital, Alma tells Frederik the truth about her sexual assault as a teenager, which he knows few details of: at age 15, she initiated a sexual relationship with Wolff, and when he ended the relationship to be with a woman his age, she fabricated a rape allegation against him that she later recanted but led to his suicide. Frederik points out that even if she feels that way, what happened was statutory rape.
In an epilogue set in January 2025, Alma is now a dean, having restored her career by publishing an article about her experience with statutory rape as a teenager. She meets Maggie at a diner—their first reunion since the earlier events. They discuss what has happened in their lives, and Alma tells Maggie that Hank now works as a political consultant for the Democratic Party and is making a lot of money, and that she's still with Frederik. Maggie is engaged to a woman named Nia. Maggie comments that Alma's article was a cynical move but smart, and that Alma "won", and she leaves. As Alma pays and leaves, Luca Guadagnino yells "cut!" off-screen.
Cast
- Julia Roberts as Alma Imhoff, a respected, well-liked professor at Yale University
- Ayo Edebiri as Margaret "Maggie" Resnick, a young philosophy student and Alma's protégée
- Andrew Garfield as Henrik "Hank" Gibson, Alma's colleague and close friend, who is accused of assault
- Michael Stuhlbarg as Frederik Mendelssohn, Alma's psychiatrist husband
- Chloë Sevigny as Dr. Kim Sayers, the university's student liaison and Alma's friend
- Thaddea Graham as Katie
- David Leiber as Dean RJ Thomas
- Lío Mehiel as Alex, a law student and Maggie's partner
- Will Price as Arthur
Production
Principal photography began in London and Cambridge University on July 6, 2024. The film shot on location there for a week before shooting the last five weeks on stage at Shepperton Studios. Filming wrapped on August 16, after six weeks of shooting. Cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed shot the project on 35 mm film, marking his return to a feature film production after 25 years. The film's costume design was done by Jonathan Anderson, the creative director of Loewe, marking his third collaboration with Guadagnino following Challengers and Queer.
Release
The film premiered at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on August 29, 2025, followed by its North American premiere as the opening film of the 63rd New York Film Festival on September 26. It opened in limited release in the United States on October 10, before expanding to wide release on October 17. The film is available for streaming on Amazon Prime.It was the first film from Amazon MGM Studios to be released internationally by Sony Pictures Releasing International, following the conclusion of a three-year deal with Warner Bros. Pictures.
Reception
Box office
After the Hunt was considered a box-office bomb. The film grossed $3.2 million in its domestic opening weekend, finishing outside the top ten. With a production budget estimated between $70–80 million, of which Roberts received $20 million, the film was projected to lose money for the studio.Critical response
, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 52 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C-" on an A+ to F scale.Several critics praised Roberts' performance, calling it one of her best in years and describing it as "superb" and a "monumental center" of the entire film. Owen Gleiberman of Variety called the film an "urgent and provocative conversation piece" and noted that it was "made with a fair amount of craft and intrigue”, but said, “it's also a weirdly muddled experience; a tale that's tense and compelling at times, but dotted with contrivances and too many vague unanswered questions". Bilge Ebiri of Vulture wrote that "After the Hunt might be confused, and it might even be unsatisfying, but it also refuses to coddle anyone, and that feels like some sort of victory" because " seems engineered to let each viewer see what they want in it, both the good and the bad".
In a negative review, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that "Luca Guadagnino misfires with this bafflingly overlong, overwrought #MeToo campus accusation drama", finding Garrett's screenwriting "worryingly muddled and contrived" and the characterisations "unfocused", which penalise the cast's acting skills.