Julia Roberts made her debut at the Venice Film Festival Friday telling journalists "we wanted the controversy" over Luca Guadagnino's new film After The Hunt which deals provocatively with issues arising from the #MeToo movement.
    A long round of applause greeted Roberts' entrance into the packed press room, marking her first time at the Lido with Call Me By Your Names helmer Guadagnino's film presented out of competition.
    The diva, wearing an elegant blue suit with a cream-colored shirt, addressed one of her first questions, one about the discussion the film has sparked and whether she thinks it undermines the feminist struggle.
    "I don't want to contradict you, it's not in my nature," she said with a smile, "but what you just said is beautiful because it brings us back to discussions between women, not because they don't support each other, but by addressing them in a new way...
    We really wanted all these different points of view to be there at the end of the film." The story stars Alma, a respected philosophy professor at Yale who finds herself dealing with trauma and some choices from her past when a colleague and dear friend, Henrik (Andrew Garfield), is accused of sexual harassment by a student, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), one of Alma's most brilliant students.
    When asked if she thinks the film will spark controversy and be considered politically incorrect, she responds with irony.
    "I love light questions early in the morning," she says with a smile.
    "I don't know if there will be polemics and controversy over the film, but we challenge people to become passionate, even angry.
    "We don't make statements; we share the lives of these characters.

The most exciting part is that people then talk about it, because we are losing the art of conversation in our time."
   

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA