Call Me By Your Name, Luca Guadagnino’s new film is a sensually transcendental, emotionally tender tale of first love, based on the acclaimed novel by André Aciman.
Set in the summer of 1983 in northern of Italy, Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet), a precocious 17- year-old American-Italian boy, spends his days in his family’s 17th century villa transcribing and playing classical music, reading, and flirting with his friend Marzia (Esther Garrel).
Elio enjoys a close relationship with his father (Michael Stuhlbarg), a professor specializing in Greco-Roman culture, and his mother Annella (Amira Casar), a translator, granting the boy high culture.
While Elio’s sophistication and intellectual gifts suggest he is already a fully-fledged adult, he is still an innocent and unformed boy when it comes to love.
Things change, when Oliver (Armie Hammer), a charming American scholar working on his doctorate, arrives as the annual summer intern to help Elio’s father. Amid the sun-drenched splendor of the setting, Elio and Oliver discover their awakening desire in the course of a summer that will alter their lives forever.
Director’s Statement
I like to think that CALL ME BY YOUR NAME closes a trilogy of films on desire, together with I AM LOVE and A BIGGER SPLASH. Where in the former onesm desire was driving to possession, regret, contempt, need for a liberation, in CALL ME BY YOUR NAME we wanted to explore an idyll of youth. Elio, Oliver and Marzia are entangled in the beautiful confusion of what once Truman Capote described when he said that “love, having no geography, knows no boundaries.”
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME is also my homage to the fathers of my life: my own father, and my cinematic ones: Renoir, Rivette, Rohmer, Bertolucci…
—Luca Guadagnino
LUCA GUADAGNINO is an award-winning director, screenwriter, producer, and artistic entrepreneur.
In 2010, he came into international renown for his critically acclaimed film I AM LOVE, starring frequent collaborator Tilda Swinton, which garnered an Academy Award nomination in Best Achievement in Costume Design as well as Golden Globe® and BAFTA award nominations for Best Foreign Language Film.
He most recently directed A BIGGER SPLASH (2015) starring Swinton, Ralph Fiennes, Dakota Johnson, and Matthias Schoenaerts. The film premiered in competition at The Venice Film Festival and screened at the Busan International Film Festival and the London Film Festival.
Guadagnino made his feature film directorial debut at the 1999 Venice Film Festival with the world premiere of the English-language film, THE PROTAGONISTS (1999), which starred Swinton.
His other features include MELISSA P. (2005), and the documentaries MUNDO CIVILIZADO (2002), CUOCO CONTADINO (2004), INCONSCIO ITALIANO (2011), and BERTOLUCCI ON BERTOLUCCI (co-directed by Walter Fasano, 2013). He also directed three documentaries in “The Love Factory” series: TILDA SWINTON: THE LOVE FACTORY (2002, short), ARTO LINDSAY PERDOA A BELEZA (2004, short), and PIPPO DELBONO— BISOGNA MORIRE (2008). Guadagnino’s films have premiered at prestigious film festivals all over the world, including Venice, Berlin, Toronto, Locarno, Busan, and Sundance.
Guadagnino’s frequent presence on the international film circuit led to several invitations to serve on juries for the Turin Film Festival (2003 & 2006); the Venice Film Festival, chaired by Quentin Tarantino (2010); the Beirut International Film Festival, where he presided as President of the jury (2011); and the Locarno Film Festival (2011).
Born in Palermo, Italy and raised in Ethiopia, where his father taught history and Italian, Guadagnino’s international outlook and insatiable appetite for creative expression were calibrated early. He graduated from Rome’s University La Sapienza with a degree in History and Critics of Cinema, and did his thesis on Jonathan Demme. He made his theater directing debut in 2006 with a production of Patrick Marber’s “Closer,” and his opera directing debut in 2011 with Verdi’s “Falstaff” at the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona, Italy. In 2012 Guadagnino founded the production company Frenesy, through which he produced Ferdinando Cito Filomarino’s feature ANTONIA., as well as the documentaries BELLUSCONE. A SICILIAN STORY, OMBRE DAL FANDO, and his own BERTOLUCCI ON BERTOLUCCI.
Guadagnino’s next film is a remake of Dario Argento’s cult classic horror film, SUSPIRIA, reuniting him with Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson. The release is planned for 2018.