{"id":231877,"date":"2025-10-17T16:20:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T16:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/231877\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T16:20:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T16:20:10","slug":"inside-after-the-hunt-the-most-provocative-film-of-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/231877\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside “After the Hunt,” the most provocative film of 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following the premiere of \u201cAfter the Hunt\u201d at the 82nd annual Venice Film Festival last August, journalist Federica Polidoro sat for a junket interview with the film\u2019s stars, Julia Roberts<\/a>, Ayo Edebiri<\/a> and Andrew Garfield<\/a>. The film, about a reported sexual assault on an Ivy League campus and the fallout that occurs between two professors, Alma (Roberts) and Hank (Garfield) and their young protege (Edbiri), is practically Byzantine. Naturally, journalists were eager to make sense of it. During their conversation, Polidoro attempted<\/a> to parse the film\u2019s intricate themes of social justice, accountability, sexual assault, power grabs, campus politics and women\u2019s rights. \u201cNow that the MeToo era and Black Lives Matter are done, what do we have to expect in Hollywood, and [what did we lose] with the [current political] era?\u201d Polidoro asked, directing her question specifically to Roberts and Garfield. In response, Edebiri looked at her costars to indicate her vexation that only the white members of the cast were being asked about the status of social movements. Roberts followed it up by leaning toward Polidoro, asking, \u201cCan you repeat that? With your sunglasses on, I can\u2019t tell which of us you\u2019re talking to, so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly after the interview was uploaded, the clip went massively viral, garnering upward of 27.4 million views on X at the time of writing, and making Edebiri\u2019s confused reaction<\/a> into a meme of its own. Polidoro was quickly taken to task online, with commenters questioning her intentions and morals so intensely that Polidoro released a statement<\/a> on her Instagram story. \u201cCensoring or delegitimizing questions deemed \u2018uncomfortable\u2019 does not fall within the practice of democracy,\u201d Polidoro wrote. \u201cJournalism\u2019s role is to ask questions, even on delicate topics, with respect and responsibility.\u201d While Polidoro\u2019s observations are correct on that front, her interview opened a channel of dialogue between those with access and those without; the people who wield power and those who don\u2019t just witness its use, but feel compelled to comment on how power is used.<\/p>\n

Ironically, Polidoro\u2019s question and the public\u2019s response became an ironic portrait of the exact conversations \u201cAfter the Hunt\u201d is depicting, where characters are so consumed in their own agendas that they refuse to listen to or consider the feelings of anyone else, often to their own detriment. In the film, there is no middle ground, only a binary idea of justice \u2014 a rigid, unmoving idea of what is right and what is wrong.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(Amazon MGM Studios) Julia Roberts as Alma Imhoff in \u201cAfter the Hunt\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always the desire to overexplain. \u2018I didn\u2019t mean it that way, and I swear to God, I\u2019m a feminist!\u2019 You always want to [differentiate between] the person you are and the thing you wrote. My hope was always that, by the end of the film, you understand why Alma behaves the way that she did.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the film\u2019s screenwriter, Nora Garrett, both Polidoro\u2019s question and the public\u2019s response to it were surprising, but not unexpected. \u201cWe\u2019re all witnessing the flattening of beliefs and views into their most extreme and most one-dimensional on both sides,\u201d Garrett tells me over coffee in New York\u2019s West Village, shortly after the film\u2019s stateside premiere at the New York Film Festival<\/a>. \u201cBut unfortunately, or fortunately, human beings are just far more complicated than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a first-time screenwriter watching her script thrust into the stratosphere, Garrett witnessed a similar set of intense, passionate reactions to her film, which received mixed reviews out of Venice and has continued to polarize viewers since. But despite the varied word-of-mouth response, \u201cAfter the Hunt\u201d manages to do what so many modern films cannot: It challenges its audience, forcing them to think about their own perspectives, beliefs and ideas about human nature in a time when so many people assume they\u2019ve got it all figured out. But unlike her film, which offers few easy answers, Garrett is delightfully candid. Below, she dives into the whirlwind of getting her first film made, accusations that she\u2019s a \u201cbad feminist,\u201d critics who are pierced by her thorny script, and that viral Venice interview heard round the internet.<\/p>\n

This is your first screenplay, and you have these huge names attached. What has this experience been like so far?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The script was finished in 2023, but I was pretty convinced that my best-case scenario for it was going to be spec, or just a sample [to bring to potential agents and managers]. It\u2019s the exact subject matter everyone tells you not to write about. Somebody once referred to it as \u201cradioactive.\u201d So I thought the idea of it becoming a film would be sort of\u2026<\/p>\n

Pie in the sky?<\/p>\n

100%. But friends of mine who I really trusted said, \u201cI think you have something here.\u201d\u00a0Once the script got into the studio system, there was word of mouth that people who are far more powerful than me were interested. I think that\u2019s when my life really started to feel like it was changing. My very first meeting with Luca was actually at the Chateau Marmont, where I used to work. There\u2019s always that fantasy that you\u2019re like, \u201cOne day, I\u2019m gonna come back here.\u201d One of my first weeks at the Chateau, there\u2019s a cook who cooks for the employees named Betty, and she asked me, \u201cWhat do you do?\u201d And at that point, I was still pursuing acting. I told her that, and she said, \u201cThe only person I\u2019ve ever seen make it is Mark Ruffalo. Good luck.\u201d<\/p>\n

Your screenplay\u2019s dissection of our modern culture is so complex. Were there any specific moments in the zeitgeist over the last decade that you felt people weren\u2019t talking about enough that sparked this idea?<\/p>\n

There was a part of me that felt like there was a lack of nuance in the conversations that were happening in these public forums. Part of that is because we all live in this increasingly online culture, in the Anthropocene, and we\u2019re all witnessing the flattening of beliefs and views into their most extreme and most one-dimensional on both sides. I think that\u2019s true for everything. But unfortunately, or fortunately, human beings are just far more complicated than that.<\/p>\n

In terms of these stories, whether they\u2019re about #MeToo or even power dynamics or campus stories, we\u2019re not afforded that kind of nuance. Usually, we get preachiness or something clean-cut and easy to discern. What drove you to make \u201cAfter the Hunt\u201d less easily digestible?\u00a0<\/p>\n

That was something that was teased out through the collaboration with Luca. Luca is so intentional and so faithful. But he made a really good point that someone like Alma, who has worked her entire life to get to the top of this power realm \u2014 who fought through illness and misogyny and all the things she lists at the beginning of the film \u2014 she wouldn\u2019t give up. She wouldn\u2019t just lie down and allow people to take something from her, whether or not it\u2019s for her quote-unquote highest good. It\u2019s about her needing to have that brass ring no matter what. And I felt that he was right about that. I felt it made sense of the world we live in, because I think people are, for the most part, loath to give up on themselves or on their aims.<\/p>\n

We live in a time where people either want to be told exactly what to do or they don\u2019t want to be told what to do at all. But this film falls smack in the middle. It\u2019s not revealing anything. There are no easy answers.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s funny, looking back on our rehearsal and collaborative process, we talked very rarely about the current cultural climate. Not because we didn\u2019t have that in the back of our brains, but Luca works very spontaneously, very specifically and very in-the-moment. And I think that there\u2019s a sense of like every scene arrives to him anew on the day. If you\u2019re thinking about, \u201cWhat is this going to do in culture? How is this going to feel in culture?\u201d that\u2019s assuming it\u2019s going to do anything.<\/p>\n

Start your day with essential news from Salon.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter<\/a>, Crash Course.<\/p>\n

You lose the real story in pursuit of relevance?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Right. It\u2019s a certain sense of manipulation that can get you away from following where your story wants to go.<\/p>\n

Alma is so complex and full of contradictions. She\u2019s not easy to pull apart.<\/p>\n

Alma was always someone who lived a life of the mind and lived a life of many machinations, and, therefore, was calculating and precise, and also deeply contradictory and steeped in a sense of self-denialism. You try to love that person, try to be with that person, and you\u2019re always going to get [shades of them]. Maggie only sees a facet of her, and Hank also only sees a facet of her because she\u2019s very controlling about how she projects this certain type of persona, until that becomes untenable. But I think the female characters I\u2019ve always been interested in are women of appetite.<\/p>\n

\u201cAppetite\u201d is a great way to describe someone so hungry for something that she makes herself sick by the end of the film.<\/p>\n

I was fascinated by a woman who lived such a life of the mind that she had a sort of willful misunderstanding of the machinations of her body. She was treating her body like she was a teenager. She wants to coast towards this goal of academic tenure. And I was interested in that because we live in a culture of optimization, and especially for women, there\u2019s so much emphasis on the way you treat your body. I was fascinated by the idea of someone who has their teeth sharpened and is openly ambitious.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(Amazon MGM Studios) Andrew Garfield as Henrik \u201cHank\u201d Gibson and Julia Roberts as Alma Imhoff in \u201cAfter the Hunt\u201d<\/p>\n

To have someone like Julia Roberts playing that character, too, and in your first script. What was that phone call like?\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of those things where the verbiage that everyone uses is \u201cattached.\u201d And my question was, \u201cOkay, what does that mean? Are we signing anything?\u201d I was like, \u201cLet\u2019s lock it down!\u201d Julia Roberts is in her own echelon. She is completely in a pantheon that I could only deign to touch. I was just like, trying not to be a stuttering idiot, trying not to blurt out, \u201cI love \u2018Pretty Woman\u2019!\u201d But then you meet her, and you meet someone who\u2019s so disarming, honest and frank. A woman in her position could very easily allow herself to be subsumed by the mechanism that protects celebrity. But I think she\u2019s willfully human.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Alma is moving with blinders on. She doesn\u2019t really have the capacity to process Maggie\u2019s confession that Hank assaulted her through any lens outside of her own experience with Hank. Why include a plotline where a woman is apprehensive about believing another woman? I imagine that\u2019s part of why the film has been greeted with tension.<\/p>\n

Venice was an entree into that response. With a film like this, if you want people to respond and bring themselves to it, you don\u2019t get to pick and choose how that happens. There\u2019s always the desire to overexplain, and be like, \u201cI didn\u2019t mean it that way, and I swear to God, I\u2019m a feminist!\u201d You always want to [differentiate between] the person you are and the thing you wrote. My hope was always that, by the end of the film, you understand why Alma behaves the way that she did, and you understand why she is unable to receive Maggie\u2019s confession. Because to receive Maggie\u2019s confession would mean dismantling her self-denialism. Alma wants this thing so f*cking badly, and so much of that has been predicated on being able to compartmentalize and being able to not look at certain things from her past. Then, when she\u2019s forced to look at it, she\u2019s unable to because of how hard she\u2019s worked to compartmentalize. Those things don\u2019t just come unraveled in one moment.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a modern desire to have everyone react perfectly in a moment, and to have that moment of reaction be the defining statement of their character. But that\u2019s not how we work as people; we\u2019re all informed by our own sh*t.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To me, Alma\u2019s vulnerable moment in the hospital bed at the end of the film is what I hope people see as an aha moment of, \u201cOh, that\u2019s why,\u201d and get a real sense of empathy and forgiveness for Alma, or at least understanding as to why she\u2019s behaved that way. Responding imperfectly in a moment of great stress doesn\u2019t mean that this is a story designed to show how women fail each other, or how women are pitted against each other, or to regress feminism. None of that is what I believe is in the script and in the close watching of the film, and none of that is what I believe I intended. It was always about the character behaving this way because she cannot allow herself the truth of her own experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou meet Julia Roberts, and you meet someone who\u2019s so disarming, honest and frank. A woman in her position could very easily allow herself to be subsumed by the mechanism that protects celebrity. But I think she\u2019s willfully human.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film allows us to wonder if Maggie is telling the truth about her assault. We get the sense that she\u2019s being honest, but there\u2019s no 100% clarity. Why leave it as a question mark?<\/p>\n

Maggie lying about plagiarizing her thesis [is important]. When stories like this come out in the news, it can become a character assassination. \u201cHas this person been truthful their entire life? And does that mean they\u2019re telling the truth now?\u201d Oftentimes, men are given much more of the benefit of the doubt. \u201cThey\u2019ve been nice their entire life, they\u2019ve been good their entire life!\u201d I just don\u2019t believe that human beings are that linear, and I think that\u2019s incredibly frustrating, especially because in this moment where we\u2019re trying to figure out what grace looks like and what rehabilitation looks like. We don\u2019t have the answers. We\u2019ve done our best with the justice system, but it fails much of the time. We want things to be clear so that we can have a very clear understanding of, \u201cThis is how I will move forward, and this is how someone will be punished.\u201d<\/p>\n

Films are often supposed to represent the idealized version of the narrative. So I understand why people would be watching this and be like, \u201cNo, no, that\u2019s not right.\u201d But certainly, my script is not in an effort to denigrate Maggie\u2019s experience.<\/p>\n

I wonder if some of that response has been because people perceive actors like Julia and Ayo to have certain character traits in real life that are supposed to bleed into the roles they take on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

People have a very clear idea of who Julia Roberts the actress is, and who Ayo Edebiri the actress is, and Luca as a storyteller. At the end of the day, a film is always a work of fiction. You\u2019re telling a story. And I think that there\u2019s a hyper-personalization happening where people believe that the characters people play are also them in real life, or the stories that people write are also them in real life. And that doesn\u2019t allow for a lot of experimentation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(Amazon MGM Studios) Ayo Edebiri as Margaret \u201cMaggie\u201d Resnick in \u201cAfter the Hunt\u201d<\/p>\n

The ending of this film will be a sticking point, and it almost throws everything that came before it into question, depending on how you read it. Was Luca verbally calling \u201ccut\u201d over the shot of a $20 bill Alma puts on the table a conversation between you both?<\/p>\n

Luca doesn\u2019t make shot lists, so it was not something that I had prior knowledge of.\u00a0But I do think, to Luca, the focus on the money was about commerce and power, and about the idea that these are people who are always going to be about transactions. In our culture, money is inextricable from power. And then I think the \u201ccut\u201d was meant to be the thing that reminds audiences that this is a movie, and it\u2019s Luca\u2019s interpretation of the film. Who owns the narrative? And I think the two characters at the end, Alma and Maggie, are having a conversation in which they\u2019re trying to come to terms with the fact that they will never be on the same page. But they\u2019re owning that, and feeling felt in that, whereas hearing \u201ccut\u201d gives you the sense that this was someone else\u2019s narrative all along.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not so naive to think that I don\u2019t have anything to learn. God, I would quit now!\u201d<\/p>\n

The viral question at Venice, where the interviewer was implying that we were past a certain cultural moment, what was your reaction to seeing that as the person who wrote the movie, and then seeing Julia, Ayo and Andrew shut it down and reframe the narrative being spun in the question?<\/p>\n

Julia, Ayo and Andrew are such professionals and people of such character. To not only have these incredibly talented people as a part of this film, but to have these people who are deeply integritous, and who are unafraid to be present in that integrity in such a charged environment? I\u2019m just glad they exist.<\/p>\n

When things fade out of the headlines, like Ayo was saying, it is tempting to believe that something has been solved. But the truth of the matter is, and why social justice movements are so difficult for the people who are on the front lines of them, you\u2019re only hoping to move the needle one inch. It\u2019s tempting to believe we can supersede that, but the fact is, we\u2019re always going to be attempting to unpick the injustices that exist absolutely.<\/p>\n

It seems maybe there are some willful bad readings of this film, just based on its subject matter. Have you read any of the criticism?<\/p>\n

[Laughs.]<\/p>\n

People do not want to respond to the conversations you\u2019re having in this film favorably. What has that been like? I mean, we\u2019re not talking about overall pans here, but\u2026<\/p>\n

A friend of mine said something to me the other day that helped put some perspective on it: \u201cLook, mixed reviews for your first film is great.\u201d And I am not so naive to think that I don\u2019t have anything to learn. God, I would quit now! But I\u2019m a sensitive person. I made a really strong commitment to try and stay offline, but unfortunately, the IMDB app, of all places, notifies me anytime my name is in an article. I tapped on one, and it was the worst headline, specifically about the script and specifically mentioning me by name. And I was in my apartment after Venice and was like, \u201cWell, here we go!\u201d I gave myself one hour to go down the rabbit hole.<\/p>\n

But I think criticism that always hits the most personally are the ones implying [I don\u2019t care about women.] I really care about women\u2019s stories, feminism and the feminist movement. I have been so impacted by the movements that have championed different ways of being a woman, and being a female-identifying person in this world, and I would hate to be seen as on the wrong side of that. That\u2019s not my intention. And I think anytime you approach something with nuance, and it\u2019s not met with nuance, there\u2019s a feeling of . . . disappointment doesn\u2019t quite cover it. And at the same time, people are entitled to their own opinion! There\u2019s nothing I can do. And again, you don\u2019t get to pick and choose. If you start a conversation, and if you want to have people bring themselves to it, then that self is allowed to show up in any way it wants.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/p>\n

about provocative films<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following the premiere of \u201cAfter the Hunt\u201d at the 82nd annual Venice Film Festival last August, journalist Federica…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,206],"class_list":["post-231877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}