Luca Guadagnino's 'After the Hunt' to open New York Film Festival

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NEW YORK (AP) — Luca Guadagnino's “After the Hunt” will open the 63rd New York Film Festival, Film at Lincoln Center announced Wednesday.

“After the Hunt” will first premiere at the Venice Film Festival, but on Sept. 26, it will kick off the New York Film Festival. An Amazon MGM Studios release due out this fall, it stars Julia Roberts as a Yale philosophy professor whose comfortable life is tested after her protege (Ayo Edebiri) accuses the professor's longtime colleague (Andrew Garfield) of sexual assault.

Dennis Lim, artistic director of the festival, said Guadagnino's film “confirms his status as one of the most versatile risk-takers working today.”

“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,” Lim said in a statement.

Guadagnino will return to the festival that last year hosted his William S. Burroughs adaptation “Queer,” and that also selected his 2017 film “Call Me by Your Name.”

“I have always found the New York Film Festival to be an arbiter of global cinema,” said Guadagnino. “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.”

The New York Film Festival runs Sept. 26 through Oct. 13.