Luca Guadagnino

Luca Guadagnino is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker and known as a close collaborator with actor Tilda Swinton. He is one of the few major Italian director-writer-producers of his generation to work regularly in English, which has allowed his eclectic range of movies to be released and exhibited widely across the world. From the start, with his debut feature, The Protagonists (1999), Guadagnino was working with some of his future regular collaborators, including Swinton, co-star Fabrizia Sacchi, and editor Walter Fasano.

Guadagnino was director and co-producer (with Lorenzo Mieli) of screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes’ adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ 1985 book set in 1940s Mexico City, Queer (2024), starring Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Lesley Manville, Jason Schwartzman, and Henry Zaga, and co-produced by the Italian-based The Apartment and Frenesy Films.

His sophomore feature was the commercial hit, the erotic drama Melissa P. (2005), with Maria Valverde, Sacchi, Geraldine Chaplin, and Alba Rohrwacher. Guadagnino launched his “Desire Trilogy” with co-producer and co-creator Swinton with I Am Love (2009), which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Costume Design and included a rare score by composer John Adams.

After producing the films Padroni di Casa (2012) and Antonia (2015), and making the documentary portrait of master Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci titled Bertolucci on Bertolucci (2013), Guadagnino made his third feature and his second in the “Desire” trilogy, A Bigger Splash (2015), with Ralph Fiennes, Dakota Johnson, Matthias Schoenaerts, and Swinton, and with a David Kajganich screenplay loosely based on Jacques Deray’s 1969 film, La Piscine (while borrowing the title of a celebrated painting by David Hockney).

Achieving considerably greater fame and honors with his concluding film in his “Desire” trilogy, Luca Guadagnino directed and produced his biggest hit, Call Me By Your Name (2017), based on James Ivory’s screenplay and co-starring Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet with cast members Michael Stuhlbarg and Esther Garrel. (Guadagnino, ironically, had only intended to serve as a location scout for original director Ivory, but took over the production when Ivory exited.)

The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and received North American distribution from Sony Pictures Classics, earning four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. The next year, Guadagnino swerved in a starkly different direction with his violent remake of Dario Argento’s giallo classic, Suspiria (2018), a controversial project that drew the most split reaction of any of his films to date, co-starring Johnson, Swinton, Ingrid Caven, and Chloë Grace Moretz. Guadgnino served as producer for his then-partner filmmaker Fernandino Cito Filomarino’s action movie for Netflix, Beckett (2021), starring John David Washington.

Returning to the horror genre and actor Chalamet, Luca Guadagnino produced and directed Bones & All (2022), described as a cannibal road movie in the 1980s, with regular screenwriter David Kajganich adapting Camille DeAngelis’ novel. Joining Chalamet in the cast were actors Taylor Russell, Mark Rylance, Michael Stuhlbarg, André Holland, Jessica Harper, and Chloë Sevigny, with the film premiering at the Venice Film Festival and MGM and Warners sharing worldwide distribution.

Guadagnino’s next project as director-producer (with co-producer Amy Pascal) is Challengers (2023), a tennis-based rom-com starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist. Guadagnino will follow this with a planned sequel to Call Me By Your Name, titled Find Me (date to be announced), with Stuhlbarg, Amira Casar, and Esther Garrel.

Luca Guadagnino was also producer only on three features slated in 2025 and later: Atropia (date to be announced), directed by debuting feature filmmaker Hailey Gates and co-starring Alia Shawkat and Callum Turner; Diciannove (date to be announced), directed by Italian filmmaker Giovanni Perrier Tortorici and co-starring Manfredi Marini and Victoria Planeta; and Georgian director/writer Dea Kulumbegashvili’s drama, Those Who Find Me (date to be announced), starring Merage Ninidze, Ia Sukhitashvili, and Kakha Kintsurashvili.