Luca Guadagnino
Birthdate: Aug 10, 1971
Birthplace: Palermo, Sicily, Italy
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.
Personal Details
Luca Guadagnino was born in the Sicilian city of Palermo, and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia by his Algerian-born mother and his father, a teacher of Italian literature and history. When Guadagnino was six years old, his family fled Ethiopia at the start of that country’s 1977 civil war and returned to Palermo.
Guadagnino began making his short films in Super 8. After studying literature at the University of Palermo, Guadagnino graduated from the Sapienza University of Rome with degrees in literature and cinema, writing a thesis on the filmmaker Jonathan Demme. Guadagnino was with life partner, Italian writer-director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino from 2009 to 2020; the couple has no children. His height is 6’.
Awards
Nominee, Best Picture, Academy Awards (2018); Three-time Nominee, Best Film/Best Film not in the English Language/David Lean Award for Direction, BAFTA Awards (2011, 2018); Winner, Best Adapted Screenplay, David di Donatello Awards (2019); Winner, EFA People’s Choice Award, European Film Awards (2018); Nominee, Best Picture, Golden Globe Awards (2018); Winner, Robert Altman Award, Independent Spirit Awards (2019); Nominee, Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media, Grammy Awards (2019); Winner, Best Director, Los Angeles Film Critics Association (2017); Three-time Winner, FEDIC Award Special Mention/Best Innovative Budget Award/Soundtrack Stars Award, Venice Film Festival (1999, 2015).
BAFTA Film Award
BAFTA Awards
Critics Choice Award
Critics Choice Awards
Filmography
director
Previous (5)
- 2024 |
- 2024 | Challengers
Challengers
Tashi, a former tennis prodigy turned coach, transformed her husband into a champion. But to overcome a recent losing streak and redeem himself, he'll need to face off against his former best friend and Tashi's ex-boyfriend.
- 2022 | Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams
Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams
The life of Italian shoemaker Salvatore Ferragamo, who created shoes for Hollywood stars during the silent film era and for iconic films of the period.
- 2018 | Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood
Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood
A portrait of unsung Hollywood legend Scotty Bowers, whose bestselling memoir chronicled his decades spent as sexual procurer to the stars.
- 2017 | Call Me by Your Name
Call Me by Your Name
It's the summer of 1983, and 17-year-old Elio is spending the days with his family at their villa in Lombardy, Italy. He soon meets Oliver, who's working as an intern for Elio's father. They discover the heady beauty of awakening ...
actor
Previous (22)
- 2022 | Bones and AllasDirector(directed by)
Bones and All
A young woman embarks on a 1000 mile odyssey through America where she meets a disenfranchised drifter. But all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts and to a final stand that will determine whether love can survive their othe...
- 2021 | Beckett
- 2021 | The Home Front - A Journey in Italy with Domenico Quirico
- 2020 | Untitled Apple Studios/Rooney Mara Project
- 2018 | The Lord of the Flies
- 2018 |
- 2017 | Find Me
- 2016 | The War Within
- 2015 | A Bigger Splashas Director
- 2015 | Antonia.
- 2014 | Burial Rites
- 2013 | Bertolucci on Bertolucci
- 2013 | Queer
- 2012 | The Landlords
- 2011 | Inconscio italiano
- 2009 | I Am Love
- 2008 | The Love Factory #3 Pippo Delbono - Bisogna morire
- 2005 | Melissa P.
- 2004 | Cuoco contadino
- 2003 | Mundo civilizado
- 1999 | The Protagonists
- 1973 | Scarface
Some Facts About Luca Guadagnino
Frank Commentator: Luca Guadagnino does something few fellow directors do, which is openly criticize fellow directors, including biting comments about Xavier Dolan, Paolo Sorrentino, and Nanni Moretti, calling “this once-youthful, anarchic director” now “establishment.”
Firm Advice: At dinner with filmmaker Jean-Marie Straub, Guadagnino was told by him not to go to film school.
Ad Man: Luca Guadagnino has directed, conceived, or produced nearly a dozen commercials for such sponsors as Cartier, Giorgio Armani, Fendi, Salvatore Ferragamo, and Ermenegildo Zegna.
Multifaceted: Guadagnino has directed nine documentaries and seven short films while serving as producer on eight documentaries and shorts.
