The 68th edition of the San Sebastian Festival will host the world premiere of Luca Guadagnino’s We Are Who We Are, the HBO-SKY 8-episode series to be programmed in full, in its cinematic form of 7 hours and 50 minutes, in the Official Selection, as part of its special screenings.
The HBO and Sky co-production relates the experiences of two adolescents on an American military base in Italy. Produced by Lorenzo Mieli for The Apartment and Mario Gianani for Wildside, both Fremantle companies, with Small Forward. Academy Award nominated Luca Guadagnino brings his unique cinematic style to television for the first time with We Are Who We Are.
The series explores friendship, first love and identity through two adolescents living on an American military base in Italy. Written by Paolo Giordano and Francesca Manieri together with Guadagnino, the series plunges the audience into the euphoria and anguish of adolescence. “The story could be set in any part of the world, but it takes place in this little corner of America in Italy,” say its creators.
The career as a writer, director and producer of Luca Guadagnino (Palermo, 1971) includes Io sono amore / I Am Love (2009), A Bigger Splash (2015), Call Me By Your Name (2017), selected for the Festival’s Perlak section and nominated for the Best Film Oscar as well as for another three Academy awards (bagging Best Adapted Screenplay for James Avory), and Suspiria (2018). The coming Venice Festival will premiere the short film Fiori, fiori, fiori!, which he shot during lockdown, as well as the documentary Salvatore-Shoemaker of Dreams, about the shoemaker and designer Salvatore Ferragamo.
The cast of We Are Who We Are features Chloë Sevigny, Jack Dylan Grazer, Alice Braga, Jordan Kristine Seamón, Spence Moore II, Kid Cudi, Faith Alabi, Francesca Scorsese, Ben Taylor, Corey Knight, Tom Mercier and Sebastiano Pigazzi.
In the words of the San Sebastian Festival director, José Luis Rebordinos, having the world premiere of We Are Who We Are is a “luxury” for the Festival programme. “In his first inroads to tv series, Guadagnino succeeds in creating a unique universe inhabited by memorable characters who try to find themselves, to forge their own identity and to find their place in a world in which they feel ill-suited. The series is a beautiful ode to the freedom and individuality of people, particularly youths. Moreover, it is virtuously narrated, filmed and performed”, he affirms.
The series was one of only two projects selected for the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in Cannes, whose 52nd edition was unable to go ahead due to Covid-19. The first two episodes of We Are Who We Are will be broadcast in September by HBO, while the complete series will screen in San Sebastian as a world premiere.
