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
The American Friend
Wim Wenders' take on Patricia Highsmith's Ripley's Game is the real deal, an authentic mittel-European neo-noir, with Dennis Hopper as the original American psycho, Tom Ripley. This Film Studies screening is introduced by Patricia Gruben.
Turner & Constable
Filmed as a supplement to a blockbuster exhibition at Tate Britain happening right now, this doc in the popular Exhibition on Screen series allows us to view these competitive, complementary English landscape artists side by side.
The President's Cake
Nine year old Lamia and her friend Saeed venture into the city to scrounge ingredients for a cake to celebrate Sadaam Hussein's birthday — a quest fraught with real peril in precarious times. Winner, Camera d'Or, Cannes.