'We Are Who We Are': 'Call Me By Your Name' Director's Coming-Of-Age Series Debuts On HBO This Fall
Over the course of nearly a decade, Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino directed what he called his "Desire" trilogy: I Am Love, A Bigger Splash, and Call Me By Your Name, three films overflowing with sweaty bodies, deep passion, and gorgeous cinematography. Now he's bringing that flavor of filmmaking to HBO with We Are Who We Are, an eight-episode limited series that debuts this fall. Take a look at the first teaser below.
That short teaser is not much to go on, but the framing evokes that same feeling Guadagnino was able to capture particularly well in Call Me By Your Name: that feeling that when you're falling in love, the rest of the world seems to fade away and nothing else matters but the two people at the center of the love story.
In We Are Who We Are, those two people are American teenagers who live on a military base in Italy with their parents. The series "explores friendship, first-love, identity, and immerses the audience in all the messy exhilaration and anguish of being a teenager – a story which could happen anywhere in the world, but in this case, happens in this little slice of America in Italy."
Jack Dylan Grazer (It, It Chapter 2) stars as shy and introverted fourteen-year-old Fraser, who moves from New York to a military base in Veneto, Italy with his mothers, Sarah (Chloë Sevigny, Big Love) and Maggie (Alice Braga, I Am Legend), who are both in the U.S. Army. Newcomer Jordan Kristine Seamón stars as the seemingly bold and confident Caitlin, who speaks Italian and has lived with her family on the base for several years. Caitlin is closer with her father (Kid Cudi, Westworld) than her older brother Danny (Spence Moore II, All American), but she and her mother (fellow newcomer Faith Alabi) do not see eye to eye.
The trailer and premise certainly makes it seem like Caitlin and Fraser are heading toward forming an intimate relationship, which Caitlin's possessive boyfriend (another newcomer, Ben Taylor) probably won't appreciate. Francesca Scorsese (yes, Martin's daughter), Corey Knight, Tom Mercier, and Sebastiano Pigazzi round out the rest of the cast.
Guadagnino serves as the showrunner, director, executive producer, and writer for the HBO-Sky Drama series, with Paolo Giordano (The Solitude of Prime Numbers) and Francesca Manieri (Italian Race) on board as co-writers. The show has not set a specific release date yet, but it will debut on HBO sometime in September 2020.