Oscar-Nominated Director Luca Guadagnino on his Lush, Lyrical Call Me By Your Name

As part of our Oscars week coverage, we’re re-posting our conversations with some of this year’s Oscar-nominees. Luca Guadagnino is nominated in the Best Picture category, alongside his producers Peter Spears, Emilie Georges and Marco Morabito. The other Best Picture nominees are Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, The Post, The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. 

Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s lush and luscious love story Call Me By Your Name is an homage to the director’s love for cinema.

Oscar Watch: Long Strange Trip Groks Grateful Dead Mystique

It was supposed to be a 90-minute documentary due for completion in 2015 in honor of the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary. But when filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev in 2003 started digging into the story of guitarist Jerry Garcia and his band mates, one thing lead to another and he blew past the 2015 deadline to produce an epic four-hour film. Short-listed for an Oscar, Long Strange Trip aims to embody the group’s free-flowing aesthetic,

Oscar Watch: Director Luca Guadagnino on his Lush, Lyrical Call Me By Your Name

Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s lush and luscious love story Call Me By Your Name is an homage to the director’s love for cinema.

“Every movie is personal. This one connects me with my love for certain films,” says Guadagnino, citing French director Maurice Pialat’s À Nos Amours and the films of Italian auteur Bernardo Bertolucci as particular influences. “I was drawn to the possibility of telling this story through the lens of directors I love: Bertolucci,