Director Luca Guadagnino was bound to premiere his new HBO series, “We Are Who We Are,” a set of coming of age stories in Italy, at Cannes as part of the Director’s Fortnight sidebar.
Paolo Moretti, who heads Directors’ Fortnight, said today that he had been plotting a continuous screening of the eight-hour work in its main Theatre Croisette venue, with a lunch break in the middle.
”This is one of our big regrets as it would have been quite something to show an eight-hour film. We saw it as a film and we wanted to bill it as such, even if it will screen as a series. Luca was really excited about this possibility. We’d been working on it since the autumn of 2019. It was a beautiful thing in our minds.”
Regardless, “We Are Who We Are” is arriving this fall on HBO and a teaser for the series was released yesterday. In the short teaser, we get some very Guadagnino-esque visuals, such as the beach, the beautiful Italian coast, as well as two attractive leads, young teens that are the heart and soul of the story.
The cast for the series includes Chloë Sevigny, Kid Cudi, Jack Dylan Grazer, Alice Braga, Spence Moore II, Jordan Kristine Seamon, Faith Alabi, Francesca Scorsese, Ben Taylor, Corey Knight, Tom Mercier, and Sebastiano Pigazzi.
Guadagnino’s last film was “Suspiria,” a change of pace for the director. known mostly for his Summer-set Italian stories (“Call Me By Your Name,” “I Am Love,” “A Bigger Splash”). The horror film wasn’t met too kindly by critics, who seemed turned off by the new direction the filmmaker decided to take in remaking Dario Argento’s ‘70s classic.
“We Are Who We Are” is set to debut on HBO in September.
Here’s the official synopsis:
Jack Dylan Grazer stars as shy and introverted fourteen-year-old Fraser, who moves from New York to a military base in Veneto with his mothers, Sarah (Chloë Sevigny) and Maggie (Alice Braga), who are both in the U.S. Army. Tom Mercier (Jonathan) plays Sarah’s assistant. Jordan Kristine Seamón stars as the seemingly bold and confident Caitlin, who has lived with her family on the base for several years and speaks Italian. Compared to her older brother Danny (Spence Moore II), Caitlin has the closer relationship with their father, Richard (Kid Cudi), and does not communicate well with her mother Jenny (Faith Alabi). Caitlin is the lynchpin of her group of friends, which includes Britney (Francesca Scorsese), an outspoken, witty, sexually uninhibited girl; the cheerful and good-natured Craig (Corey Knight), a soldier in his twenties; Sam (Ben Taylor), Caitlin’s possessive boyfriend, and Craig’s younger brother; Enrico (Sebastiano Pigazzi), a playful eighteen-year-old from Veneto, who has a weak spot for Britney; and Valentina (Beatrice Barichella), an Italian girl.
The short version: "Woman Unknown" was a compromise. The jury deadlocked over "Possible Love" and "NAZA," not able to com to terms, fell back on their #3, May el-Toukhy's film.