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True crime is often an easy genre to sell but difficult to do well, as it's a balance to make sure the victims do not get lost while the killer becomes a spectacle. Among the surplus of documentaries and docuseries about notorious or forgotten crimes, some of the very best can prove someone was wrongfully convicted or humanize the lives that have been lost. The space between fiction and non-fiction is where you will find Luca Guadagnino's The Protagonists, which is not only his directorial debut but also marks his first collaboration with actress Tilda Swinton. Fans of the Italian director have probably not seen it, and it’s surely the strangest film he’s made, with signs of his favorite cinematic elements he would bring into later, more well-known films.

This list was originally published in April 2024. It has since been updated with new films from Guadagnino.

A curious thing happened when the first trailer for “Challengers” came out: People started getting really, really weird online about the suggestion that the three main characters — played by Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor — have a threesome. It prompted memes and hand-wringing alike, as if this was the first time any actor in film history had ever pretended to engage in sex onscreen — never mind that the film ultimately doesn’t have an actual sex scene at all, instead withholding from the audience in order to build up the lingering sexual tension that eats away at all sides of its love triangle. The fervor around the possibility of sex in “Challengers” affirmed something that has been obvious for years now: Cinema, especially American cinema, is starved for films that sizzle with genuine sensuality.

Luca Guadagnino is a treasured specimen in the current landscape of arthouse cinema. He is one of the increasingly rare filmmakers capable of distilling the very essence of unconsummated desire into a palpable tension before bodies have even touched. Even rarer, though—and arguably more valuable—is the auteur’s penchant for energetic expression behind the camera that complements, rather than superseding, the subtleties of his chosen material. Uncommon is the Guadagnino film in which he’s actually taken part in shaping the screenplay, and yet his fingerprints lie on every single one of his projects, for better or worse.

At a moment when Italian cinema has relinquished its dominant grip on the art cinema scene, Guadagnino remains a bastion of his nation’s great storytellers. He wholeheartedly embraces the transnational realities of Western cinema today rather than pretending they don’t exist. From Milan to Maryland, Guadagnino’s footprint...

Daniel Craig delivers a career-best performance in Luca Guadagnino’s romantic drama “Queer,” playing a gay American expat in 1950s Mexico City. The drama, with its explicit love scenes, swept up a packed theater at its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday night, earning a 9-minute standing ovation.

When the applause began, Craig looked flushed and misty-eyed as he hugged Guadagnino. The crowd chanted “Luca! Luca! Luca!” while the ovation continued, with each actor coming down the Sala Grande steps from where they sat in the balcony to bow individually. During his turn, Craig blew kisses to the crowd as his wife, Rachel Weisz, smiled proudly.

When Craig and Starkey at last embraced, Guadagnino — and the rest of the audience — erupted in cheers as the two gripped each other in celebration. Pedro Almodóvar, whose new film “The Room Next Door” received the longest standing ovation of the fest so far with 17 minutes,...

A24 has just acquired the rights to Challengers director Luca Guadagnino's newest film Queer, starring James Bond and Knives Out actor Daniel Craig.

Fresh off the incredible success of Challengers, one of the sexiest movies of the year, Guadagnino will soon be premiering his newest film, Queer, at the 81st Venice Film Festival on September 3, where he had previously won an award in 2022. The film will have its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. According to Variety, the film has already been picked up, with A24 landing the rights to its release in the United States.

Related This Critically Acclaimed New Movie Shows the Danger of Nostalgia

I Saw the TV Glow takes an unsettling look at nostalgia, continuing A24's trend of non-traditional horror films.

The film, based on the book of the same name by William S. Burroughs, tells the story of an American...

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Luca Guadagnino knows how to make a goddamn movie. That was clear to fans of his earlier works, like the sumptuous "I Am Love," more than a decade ago. It was clear to most other people about five years ago when the bold one-two punch of "Call Me By Your Name" and "Suspiria" made moviegoers sit up and pay attention. And it's more clear than ever now, with the release of the director's latest (and reportedly biggest-budgeted) effort, the endlessly thrilling Zendaya-led sports drama "Challengers." Film after film, Guadagnino manages to tap into some hidden corners of our hearts by telling stories that are evocative and colorful, musical and sensual, messy and true.

Though Guadagnino has gained more attention in recent years, the filmmaker has actually been working since the '90s and has by now made eight narrative (or meta-narrative) features, a TV show, and several documentaries and shorts.

"I am a film director, and I work with a visual language, with a visual medium. And I try to make virtue of the use of this visual medium. And I try to make sure what I do speaks the language of cinema." –Luca Guadagnino. His latest film Challengers (final trailer here) is finally landing in theaters for everyone to enjoy this week. In celebration of this release, the UK movie magazine Little White Lies and video editor Luís Azevedo have created a supercut highlighting "The Colors Of Luca Guadagnino." It's a quick video at just 2-1/2 minutes featuring shots from almost all of his films, showing how he works his way through hot and cold colors depending on the mood. No matter what, his film always have vivid colors. Guadagnino's exceptional filmography includes: The Protagonists (1999), Melissa P. (2005), I Am Love (2009), A Bigger Splash (2015), Call Me By Your Name (2017), Suspiria...

Amazon MGM Studios has released the final trailer for Challengers, starring Zendaya as Tashi Duncan, a former tennis prodigy turned coach and a force of nature who makes no apologies for her game on and off the court.

Married to a champion on a losing streak, Tashi’s strategy for her husband’s redemption takes a surprising turn when he must face off against the washed-up Patrick—his former best friend and Tashi’s former boyfriend.

As their pasts and present collide and tensions run high, Tashi must ask herself what it will cost to win. In addition to the trailer, you can also watch a featurette on the film’s music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

From visionary filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, Challengers is rated R for language throughout, some sexual content, and graphic nudity. The drama will open in theaters on Friday, April 26, 2024.

Guadagnino directed the movie from a script by Justin Kuritzkes.

Luca Guadagnino is putting a brave face on the sudden pulling last month of new movie Challengers from the prestigious opening slot of the Venice Film Festival, after the actors’ strike grounded its U.S. cast led by Zendaya.

The Venice regular – who won its Best Director award in 2022 for Bones And All, having also premiered A Bigger Splash and Suspiria in Competition; I Am Love in Orizzonti and first feature The Protagonists in the now defunct New Territories sidebar – considers the festival his “home” and will still be out in force on the Lido.

The Oscar-nominated Call Me By Your Name director and producer is attending with two productions made under his Frenesy Film Company banner: short animated documentary The Meatseller and Italian actor Pietro Castellitto’s feature directorial debut Enea in Competition.

“You know Venezia is my home and I will be there with the short and feature in competition…...

The Venice Film Festival will open with the world premiere of Luca Guadagnino’s latest pic Challengers.

The film will be screened Out of Competition on Wednesday, August 30, in the Sala Grande at the Palazzo del Cinema (Lido di Venezia), on the opening night of the 80th Venice Film Festival.

The pic, which hits U.S. theaters September 15, stars Zendaya as Tashi Duncan, a tennis prodigy-turned-coach and a force of nature, who makes no apologies for her game on and off the court. Married to a champion (Mike Faist from West Side Story) on a losing streak, Tashi’s strategy for her husband’s redemption takes a surprising turn when he must face off against the washed-up Patrick (Josh O’Connor) – his former best friend and Tashi’s former boyfriend. As their pasts and presents collide, and tensions run high, Tashi must ask herself, what will it cost to win?

“I...

Timothee Chalamet had all of Venice seeing red on Friday night at the world premiere of “Bones and All.” The actor donned a sparkling backless jumpsuit in a blood-red shade — a cheeky wink to the drama’s central protagonists, two cannibals in love.

The film, which reunites Chalamet with his “Call Me By Your Name” director Luca Guadagnino, lives up to its title with gory attacks and scenes that involve limb-chewing and eating. But despite the uncomfortable subject matter, the audience at the Venice premiere for the movie devoured “Bones and All.” The film received a 8.5-minute standing ovation, the longest and most enthusiastic of the festival so far.

As the crowds inside the Sala Grande cheered “Luca! Luca!,” the Italian director wiped tears from his eyes. Chalamet and the cast — including Taylor Russell, who plays the film’s anti-heroine Maren — walked down the steps of the theater’s mezzanine...

“If it wasn’t for Toronto I would not be here talking to Toronto”

Luca Guadagnino has spoken of his interest in an autobiographical family film that intertwines his early years with the childhoods of his Algerian mother and Italian father.

“I have been circling for a long time the possibility – if it doesn’t sound narcissistic – to tell a story of my childhood in Ethiopia,” Guadagnino told TIFF co-head and artistic director Cameron Bailey during a virtual Masterclass.

“But doing it like Russian [dolls], to enter into the childhood of my mother in Morocco and the childhood of my father in wartime Sicily.

At the Marrakech Film Festival to give a masterclass, Italian master Luca Guadagnino spoke about the way he envisioned the sequel to “Call Me By Your Name,” as well as shared memories about his childhood and his vision of filmmaking.

Guadagnino said that while the script of “Call Me By Your Name” is “strongly faithful” to André Aciman’s book by the same name, the follow up will not be as strictly adapted from his second novel “Find Me,” which just came out and is reportedly divided in four sections set 10, 15 and 20 years after the first opus.

“The passion I have is for actors and the characters, and I believe these characters have more things to do and experience and could be interesting to see them growing in life, it’s not about a sequel it’s about what happens to them, and how to track the actors aging into the characters…...

Luca Guadagnino. Image courtesy of Mubi.Born in Palermo, Sicily, to Italian/Algerian parents, Luca Guadagnino reckons if he hadn’t become a critically acclaimed, award-winning director/producer/screenwriter, his career would probably have revolved around fashion, interior design or historical research. In fact, all of the obsessions that have clearly added to the artistic textures and detailed truths perceived in his eclectic work to date that have made them so remarkable. From his debut crime thriller The Protagonists (1999), the first of five films to star Tilda Swinton, who many call his "muse," to the incisive paean Bertolucci on Bertolucci, Guadagnino has dug deep into the human emotional and identity landscapes while never forfeiting the lush style or delicate sensuality each of his subjects, both real and imaginary, bring to the aesthetic table.After working diligently in both the feature film and documentary arenas Guadagnino’s big-time breakout came with...

A cinematic shapeshifter who never feels like she’s wearing a disguise, Tilda Swinton is one of the greatest chameleons the movies have ever known, and yet even her most extreme performances are rooted in an elemental sense of reality. She’s always equal parts natural and unnatural; intractably human, but always ready to be reborn. Revisiting her best roles almost feels like watching someone perform “Cloud Atlas” as a one-woman show.

To date, the characters Swinton has played include a vampire, a rock god, an angel, an alcoholic, an inter-dimensional monk, a gender-bending English nobleman, a post-apocalyptic Sarah Sanders, a literal ice queen, and now — in a bold new reimagining of Dario Argento’s “Suspiria” — a witchy ballet teacher, a male Holocaust survivor, and a monster who viewers will have to meet for themselves. It doesn’t matter if Swinton is starring in a Marvel movie, coldly seducing Leonardo DiCaprio in “The Beach,...

Tilda Swinton and Luca Guadagnino are reuniting for a fourth time with “Suspiria,” but their relationship started long before they even worked together for the first time on the 1999 crime thriller “The Protagonists.” Swinton recently told ScreenDaily she first met the Italian director 25 years ago, and it turns out they discussed their mutual obsession with Dario Argento’s 1977 “Suspiria” during their first conversation. Little did Swinton or Guadagnino know at the time they would reimagine the horror classic over two decades later.

“Several centuries we’ve been talking about it,” Swinton jokingly said about wanting to make a new “Suspiria” with Guadagnino. “It’s fantastically gratifying to be able to talk about it in the past tense.”

Guadagnino told ScreenDaily his “Suspiria” has been 33 years in the making, as he first became a devoted fan of Argento’s original when he saw at 14 years old. “I was understanding in an...

A decade passed between filmmaker Luca Guadagnino‘s first film, the little-seen crime thriller “The Protagonists,” and his breakout feature, the swooning “I Am Love.” Six more years would elapse until his next feature, “A Bigger Splash,” and the now the director isn’t wasting a moment. Hot on the heels of that picture, Guadagnino knocked out “Call Me By Your Name” which is already earning Oscar buzz, while he’s got the highly anticipated remake of “Suspiria” in the can.

Continue reading Luca Guadagnino To Direct ‘Swan Lake’ Starring Felicity Jones at The Playlist.

After receiving critical acclaim at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Luca Guadagnino’s Italian masterpiece, “Call Me by Your Name,” will screen at Berlinale. Based on André Aciman’s beloved 2007 novel of the same name, the drama chronicles a romance between a 17-year old boy and a handsome American intern who is staying at his parents’ cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera.

In a new clip shared by Berlinale’s website, audiences witness the young man, Elio’s (Timothée Chalamet), first interaction with Oliver (Armie Hammer). Oliver is seen arriving to the Perlman estate and greeted by Mr. Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his wife. Elio is then called down and takes Oliver’s bags to his room.

In the beginning Elio is somewhat distant towards Oliver until then the two begin to spend more time together. Per the website’s film description, “Elio begins to make tentative overtures towards...

A Bigger Splash is our fourth-favourite film of the year. Its star explains what it taught her about human nature – and reveals if she really was channelling David Bowie

Our No 4 film of the year is the third collaboration between Luca Guadagnino and Tilda Swinton, after The Protagonists (1999) and I Am Love (2010). A shimmering erotic thriller, A Bigger Splash stars Swinton as a near-mute rockstar recuperating from throat surgery in a luxury villa on a remote Italian island with her boyfriend (Matthias Schoenaerts). They are then invaded by her ex, a roistering, hard-dancing record producer played by Ralph Fiennes, and his sultry daughter (Dakota Johnson). Swinton, 56, is currently shooting a fourth film with Guadagnino, Suspiria – a horror set in a 1977 ballet school in Berlin – and so replied to questions by email.

Related: The 50 best films of 2016 in the UK: No 4 A Bigger Splash

Continue reading...

The remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria has long been in limbo, but with the directing reigns on the film being passed from David Gordon Green to Luca Guadagnino last year, new progress on the project is now being made, as a recent Q&A with Guadagnino reveals key casting for the movie.

According to a recent tweet (via Bloody Disgusting) by film journalist Alex Heller-Nicholas, Guadagnino revealed in a Q&A that Tilda Swinton (Only Lovers Left Alive, Snowpiercer) and Dakota Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey, Black Mass) are lined up to star in the Suspiria remake that will be set in Berlin circa 1977.

Heller-Nicholas’ tweet about the Q&A also mentions that Guadagnino would like John Adams to compose the music for the remake, which he says will be “the most Fassbinderian of his films” (a reference to writer/director/actor Rainer Werner Fassbinder).

Swinton and Johnson...

Fox Searchlight folks have brought out their swim gear and might be getting ready for a Cannes Film Festival splash with Luca Guadagnino’s highly anticipated English language debut. Among our most anticipated foreign film productions (ranked #19) for the upcoming ’15 campaign, A Bigger Splash stars Ralph Fiennes, Matthias Schoenaerts, Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton (who reunites with the Italian filmmaker on their fourth project – it began with The Protagonists (1999), 35 min Tilda Swinton: The Love Factory (2002), and his career best item, 2009′s I Am Love. Fox Searchlight will surely look at a festival launchpad for this art-house item.

Gist: Written by David Kajganich and based on Jacques Deray’s La Piscine, this is about the lives of a high profile couple, a famous rock star and a filmmaker (Matthias Schoenaerts and Tilda Swinton), vacationing and recovering on the idyllic sun-drenched and remote Italian island of Pantelleria are disrupted by the unexpected...

A Bigger Splash

Director: Luca Guadagnino // Writer: David Kajganich

It’s hard to believe that it’s been six years since Luca Guadagnino’s art house favorite I Am Love (2009) swept through Venice and Toronto, starring a delectable Tilda Swinton in an homage to Visconti. That was Guadagnino’s third and most acclaimed film (previously he’s directed Melissa P. in 2005 and 1999’s The Protagonists, also starring Swinton). After several experimental projects and documentaries, he’s signed onto several projects that never took off, including most notably an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist with Isabelle Huppert, Sigourney Weaver, David Cronenberg, and Denis Lavant all lined up to star (the project is now under the direction of Benoit Jacquot and will film with mostly unknowns sometime in 2015). Out of the blue, he announced he would be making A Bigger Splash, a remake of the 1969 Jacques Deray film La Piscine,...

Us director James Gray to preside over main competition jury, as previously announced.

Marco Müller, artistic director of the 8th Rome Film Festival (Nov 8-17), has announced the jury members who will complete the Competition Jury.

Jury president James Gray will be joined by:

Verónica Chen (Argentina);Luca Guadagnino (Italy);Aleksei Guskov (Russia);Noémie Lvovsky (France);Amir Naderi (Iran);Zhang Yuan (China).

(See below for more details on the jury)

The Jury will confer the feature films in Competition the:

Golden Marc’Aurelio Award for Best FilmBest Director AwardSpecial Jury PrizeBest Actor AwardBest Actress AwardAward for Emerging Actor or ActressAward for Best Technical ContributionAward for Best Screenplay.

It was also announced today that Italian actress Anna Foglietta will host the awards ceremony on Nov 16.

The actress, whose credits include Anton Corbijn’s 2010 thriller The American, starring Geroge Clooney, will continue to do the honours through the second part of the evening, when the Maverick...

1. Luca Guadagnino and Tilda Swinton I'm cheating here as I could have put it on last year's list, but I felt it was more of a 2010 title as it preemed on the world film fest circuit in fall classics such as Venice and Toronto. While I have no knowledge of how they faired before in 1999's The Protagonists or the 2002 docu short Tilda Swinton: The Love Factory, I do know that their third film together in I Am Love (Lo sono l'amore) was golden for Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino and actress Tilda Swinton. You can read this NYTimes article for more insight into how an unknown filmmaker seduced Swinton into becoming his muse, but I would suggest you see Swinton's character in her transformative states: switching from ice cold, to luke warm to burning hot. This is one director-actress pairing I look forward in seeing how they'll evolve creatively over...

Please Note: The following rankings and remarks reflect my personal opinions and do/will not in any way impact my projections or analysis on this site, wherein I strive above all else to correctly forecast what will happen, not what I believe should happen. My demonstrated ability to do that over the years is what has led most of you to my site, and any failure to do that will undoubtedly lead you away from it, so you can rest assured that I mean it when I say that one has/will have no bearing on the other.

Scott Feinberg’s Top 10 Films of 2010

1. “The Social Network” (Columbia, 10/1, PG-13, trailer)

I distinctly remember sitting in a movie theater over the summer when the first teaser for “the Facebook movie” began playing, prompting groans and snickering all around me — stuff along the lines of, “What’s it gonna be about? A server crashing?...

By Lita Robinson - July 21, 2010

Those longing for Fellini and Bergman, have I got a film for you. Everything about “I am love” is over-the-top and when the plot drags and the pounding John Adams soundtrack stops, the cinematography is breathtaking.

Tilda Swinton, who also produced and helped conceive the film with director Luca Guadagnino (this is the second time he directs Tilda Swinton— “The Protagonists” in 1999 was the first) stars as Emma Recchi, a Russian ex-pat who has married into a prestigious Milanese family. The story begins with a family dinner in which the patriarch, who is about to die, turns over the family textile business to Emma’s husband Tancredi (Pippo Delbono) and son Edo (Flavio Parenti). Emma begins to realize, with her youngest child Elisabetta (Alba Rohrwacher) leaving for college, that her duties as a mother have been fulfilled, and she feels at sea as to what to do next.

I Am Love is an unusual film that begins as an uninviting forray into the politics of a wealthy Italian family and then quickly shifts gears to focus on a passionate love affair that resonates louder than the rest of the film. The grandiose and bravado of filmmaker Luca Guadagnino is almost operatic with both scenes and characters, so as a viewer it’s easy to be taken aback by the symphonic overtures at play.

But at the heart of the film is a restrained and elegant performance by actress and producer Tilda Swinton, who steals the show as a Russian housewife seeking freedom from the shackles of her dull marriage. Swinton known for her delicate features has worked twice in the past with Guadagnino, on The Protagonists and The Love Factory. Serving as both the muse to Guadagnino’s style and acting as the pulse of the film, Swinton...

They say that you cannot get a bad meal in Italy. From personal experience I would agree. Food takes a prominent role in "I Am Love" in Sicilian-born Luca Guadagnino's film that highlights his favorite actress, Tilda Swinton. Guadagnino is not well known in these parts though he did make an English-language movie eleven years ago entitled "The Protagonists," about an Italian film crew that goes to London and is led to a story about a murder that took place years earlier. This time he contributes an Italian melodrama that is impressive more for its photography than its spare dialogue. Pictures of elaborately-prepared food such as a Russian fish soup are not only mouth-watering for the audience: they lead the principal character into a convention-subverting romance with a man a quarter century younger than she.

Actor Tilda Swinton and director Luca Guadagnino share some unusual ideas on life and art, out of which come extraordinary films such as I Am Love

At first glance, there's something strange, even skewiff, about the collaboration between Tilda Swinton and Luca Guadagnino. The pair met in Rome 20 years ago. Swinton was already a star; Guadagnino a student 11 years her younger. He had written to her months before to ask if she would become involved with an adaptation he was planning of William Burroughs's Penny Peep Show Arcade. To which, no response. So he cornered her at an official reception and asked why. She was contrite, and charmed.

They never did make the Burroughs, but they have made three other films together: artsy murder mystery The Protagonists (1999), close-up interview The Love Factory (2002), and now I Am Love, a ravishing melodrama about a Milanese dynasty thrown into disarray when the...

Today we have a brand new poster for the upcoming drama I Am Love.

I Am Love synopsis: A family embraces the positive and negative sides of new freedoms fate has brought their way in this drama from filmmaker Luca Guadagnino (Qui, The Protagonists, Tilda Swinton: The Love Factory).

Edoardo Recchi Sr. (Gabriele Ferzetti) is the patriarch of a wealthy Italian family who’ve amassed a significant fortune over the years through shrewd investments in manufacturing. Edoardo has a beautiful wife, Allegra (Marisa Berenson), and they have four grown children — Tancredi (Pippo Delbono), Edoardo Jr. (Flavio Parenti), Gianluca (Mattia Zaccaro) and Elisabetta (Alba Rohrwacher). The family gathers for a reunion at Edoardo and Allegra’s villa in Milan, with Tancredi’s wife Emma (Tilda Swinton) and Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), a chef planning on going into business with Edoardo, also in attendance. But the happy gathering takes a somber turn when...

The film is pure bliss, Tilda Swinton is not surprisingly, spot on and who knew, fluent in Italian and as I had remarked and so does this Magnolia Pictures press release, it falls into Visconti territory (The Leopard/Death in Venice). - Thanks to a couple of buyer friends and our West Coast correspondent Yama Rahimi for sending me into the last screening for Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love - the film is pure bliss, Tilda Swinton is not surprisingly, spot on and who knew, fluent in Italian and as I had remarked and so does this Magnolia Pictures press release, it falls into Visconti territory (The Leopard/Death in Venice). Magnolia Films (who've worked with Swinton this summer with the difficult to market title Erick Zonca's Julia) have picked up the rights to the pic - another post-tiff pick up that demonstrates the new wait and see trend in buyers.

The Wagner/Cuban Companies’ Magnolia Pictures announced today that it has acquired North American rights to Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love, starring Tilda Swinton, which recently bowed in Venice and Toronto to great critical acclaim. A sumptuous, ambitious and complex drama, I Am Love features a masterful performance from Swinton, who speaks Italian and Russian in the film. Compared by critics to Visconte’s The Leopard in its skillful dissection of the cultivated lives of an aristocratic Italian family, I Am Love was born out of a longtime friendship between Guadagnino and Swinton, who previously collaborated on 1999’s The Protagonists and began [...]...