Cinema 2025: “After the Hunt,” Luca Guadagnino’s New Thriller, Starring Julia Roberts

The prolific Luca Guadagnino has been a regular presence at Venice Film Fest.

Amazon MGM has set an October 10 domestic bow, which suggests After the Hunt will be going the Venice/Telluride/Toronto route.

But Cannes Fest has snatched titles from its Lido rival in the past.

There is already awards buzz about the psychological thriller, which stars Julia Roberts as a college professor.

She is faced with ethical dilemma when a star pupil (Ayo Edebiri) levels an accusation against a colleague (Andrew Garfield), and a dark secret of her own threatens to come to light.

Julia Ducournau’s follow-up to her explosive and divisive 2021 Palme d’Or winner Titane. (Spike Lee was the jury president).

Neon pre-bought North American rights to Alpha in Cannes last year, and the film may be ready for Cannes.

Golshifteh Farahani (Paterson) and Tahar Rahim (The Mauritanian) star.

Alpha is Julia Ducournau’s most personal film to date, but plot details are scarce.

Set in the 1980s, the movie follows a girl of 11 who is rejected by her classmates after it is rumored that she has been infected with a new disease.

Fatih Akin’s international breakthrough was in Berlin Fest, when Head-On won the Golden Bear in 2004.

But the German-Turkish filmmaker won the best screenplay honor at Cannes Fest in 2007 with The Edge of Heaven.

Then, Diane Kruger won best actress Palme for In the Hole in 2017.

Amrum reteams Akin and Kruger in a period drama set on the North Frisian Island of Amrum on the German North Sea coast in the final days of World War II.

Ten of Arnaud Desplechin’s features have premiered in Cannes Film Fest, including 7 in competition, the last being Brother and Sister in 2022.

His Filmlovers! received a special screening last year, and he’s screened films in Directors’ Fortnight (2015’s My Golden Days) and Un Certain Regard (2003’s En jouant ‘Dans la compagnie des hommes’).

His latest is a romantic drama starring François Civil as a virtuoso French pianist who returns from Asia to his hometown of Lyon, only to be caught up in an impossible love story.

Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Charlotte Rampling and Hippolyte Girardot co-star.

Norwegian filmmaker Mona Fastvold and her husband Brady Corbet (The Brutalist) have connection with the Venice Film Festival, which has premiered all of their output over the past decade. But Fastvold’s high-profile dramatic historical musical will be ready for Cannes should the Oscar-nominated duo choose to mix things up.

The film stars Amanda Seyfried as Ann Lee, the founder of the Shaker movement. Lee’s followers deemed her the female Christ, and her worshippers prayed through song and dance, the basis of the movie’s musical elements.

The project features original songs by Daniel Blumberg, who just won an Oscar for his score on Corbet’s The Brutalist.

Fastvold and Corbet have spent years researching Lee’s life and co-writing the script.

The film was shot in Hungary right after production wrapped on The Brutalist.