Hot button issues fuel this pressure cooker drama from the prolific and versatile Luca Guadagnino (Challengers; Call Me by Your Name). Julia Roberts plays an Ivy League professor, Alma Olsson, whose latest protege is a gifted Black student, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri, The Bear). But when Maggie calls out Alma’s old friend and colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield) for assault, Maggie doesn’t know who to believe.
Nora Garrett’s screenplay taps into the generational fault lines that have broken out across campuses over the past decade (diversity, gender, “safety”, cancel culture) and watches the supposedly liberal academics twist and turn. This is Julia Roberts’ juiciest role in a long time (turns out Alma has stashed her own personal history in the closet.) Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloë Sevigny round out the superb cast, and Guadagnino again turns to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to compose a strikingly tense and compelling score.
Supported by
Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloë Sevigny
USA
2025
English
Book Tickets
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Karen Lunder, Justin Wilkes, Alice Dawson, Nora Garrett
Producer
Brian Grazer, Luca Guadagnino, Jeb Brody, Allan Mandelbaum
Screenwriter
Nora Garrett
Original Music
Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross
Luca Guadagnino
Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino is an Academy Award, BAFTA, and Grammy nominee. Over the last three decades, his career as a director, writer, producer, and designer has been defined by rigorous dedication to artistic craft and creative experimentation.
Filmography: A Bigger Splash (2015); Call Me By Your Name (2017); Suspiria (2018); Bones and All (2022); Challengers (2024); Queer (2024)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Forastera
In this mysterious and subtle coming of age drama, teenager Cata is soaking up the sun, smoking furtive cigarettes, and enjoying a summer break with her grandparents and her younger sis in Mallorca. That is, until Cata's beloved abuela collapses...
The Mother and the Bear
Johnny Ma’s film stars Kim Ho-jung as a Korean woman who flies to Winnipeg when her immigrant daughter is hospitalized there. This crowd-pleaser plays up cultural differences to hilarious effect and offers a touching take on mother-daughter tension.
Afternoons of Solitude
Pacification director Albert Serra turns his unflinching gaze on the subject of bullfighting, and in particular the famous young matador Andrés Roca Rey. The film challenges us to look its subject square in the eye and draw our own conclusions.
The Plague
At a water polo camp, Ben is plunged into the deep end of toxic peer pressure. Terrified of incurring his campmates’ wrath, he joins them in tormenting a kid whose skin rash has been branded “the plague”. But then he experiences a breakout of his own...