After the Hunt, Luca Guadagnino’s Bold Dialogue with Woody Allen

29 August 2025

Luca Guadagnino; Woody Allen. Credit: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty; Rocco Spaziani/Archivio Spaziani/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty

A hush spread through the press room at the Venice International Film Festival when Luca Guadagnino unveiled his latest work, After the Hunt, a psychological drama starring Julia Roberts. Even before the story unfolded on screen it whispered of familiarity—not through plot but through presentation. The opening credits appear in a font that evokes — unmistakably — the visual signature of Woody Allen’s films of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was no accident. At a press conference, Guadagnino acknowledged the deliberate nod to Allen, saying the “crass answer would be why not,” before elaborating that the film resonated with the "tonal infrastructure" of works like Crimes and Misdemeanors, Another Woman, and Hannah and Her Sisters.

Ready for launch in theaters on October 10 and currently at a 50 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, After the Hunt centers on Alma (Julia Roberts), a philosophy professor whose academic life is upended when a trusted friend and colleague (Andrew Garfield) faces serious sexual abuse allegations made by one of her students (Ayo Edebiri). The film has catalyzed debate with no easy answers.

Roberts, speaking from the festival floor, defended the film’s nuanced position amid murmurs of anti‑feminist undertones. She insisted the film was never intended to take a moral stand but to ignite dialogue, lamenting that society is “losing the art of conversation.” The character-driven stakes and moral dissonance proved lively fuel for conversation—precisely the effect the filmmakers hoped to achieve.

Guadagnino echoed this ethos, suggesting the film seeks to reflect the complexity of conflicting truths rather than assert one ideology as dominant. He posed a pointed question: how should viewers reconcile admiration for an artist’s work with troubling revelations about their personal life? The Allen-inspired font, he noted, is more than an homage to a cinematic nouveau classic—it invites introspection on artistic legacy and moral accountability.

Critics have taken the film’s intellectual ambition seriously. A review following the Venice premiere called After the Hunt a cerebral and provocative dissection of cancel culture. It rejects clear-cut binaries of guilt or innocence, instead plumbing the emotional fallout of the accusation and its ripple effects: ageism, privilege, systemic injustice. The tone is chilly, the set design minimal, and the storytelling relentless—refusing to enable an easy moral resolution.

Produced with a cast that includes Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloë Sevigny, and scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the film’s ambition extends beyond narrative into atmosphere. Strategies of visual restraint and psychologically charged ambiguity push it toward being not just a drama but a contemporary moral parable.

Its debut before live audiences was met with applause and introspection. Though the film was screened out of competition, its impact was palpable. Viewers engaged in discussion rather than applause alone—just as the filmmakers intended.

Guadagnino’s reference to Allen is especially loaded now, decades after the controversies surrounding the filmmaker first surfaced. The decision to echo Allen’s images and tone, while addressing allegations of misconduct front and center in After the Hunt, creates a layered conversation about art, accountability, context, and the stories we choose to tell. If Allen prompts admiration and discomfort in equal measure, here that tension becomes the core battleground of the film itself.

Composer Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s haunting score, along with the atmospheric cinematography and spare dialogue, reinforce that tonal tension, deepening the emotional gravity of Alma’s crisis. Critics highlight that by resolving— or rather, refusing to resolve—the accusation’s fallout, Guadagnino places the audience at the heart of an ethical ambush.

As After the Hunt positions itself for its U.S. theatrical release this autumn, it stands out as a film that interrogates more than its own story. It interrogates how we engage with artistry, the gray areas that define human ethics, and the ways cinema can challenge rather than comfort.

At its core, After the Hunt is less a post-mortem of an accusation than an invitation—to talk, to argue, to disagree, to reflect. In an era grappling with cancel culture, the film’s bold attempt to restore the “art of conversation” marks it as one of this festival’s most provocative entries.