Actress Julia Roberts delves into the rarefied world of academia in her latest film, After the Hunt, denying that its ambiguous handling of a campus sexual assault allegation was politically incorrect. Also starring Andrew Garfield, the movie premiered at the 82nd Venice Film Festival, bringing Roberts to the Lido’s famed red carpet for the first time in her career.

Roberts plays Alma Olsson, a Yale philosophy professor whose life is upended when her longtime friend and colleague is accused by one of her favourite students of sexual assault. The drama probes how supposedly liberal academics wrestle with questions of loyalty, power and identity when confronted with generational fault lines.

Speaking to reporters ahead of the opening, Roberts pushed back on suggestions the film risked echoing cultural patterns that cast suspicion on survivors, particularly Black women, while preserving ambiguity around males accused of assault. “We’re not making statements, we are portraying these people in these moments of time,” Roberts said.

The Hollywood star, who won an Oscar in 2001 for Erin Brockovich, said she relished the chance to play a conflicted, compromised character, like Olsson, who is addicted to painkillers and struggles to respond to the assault allegation.