Trailer: HBO’s ‘We Are Who We Are’ from Luca Guadagnino explores love, gender and teenage life

Academy Award nominated director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) goes back to Italy and young love with his newest project, and his first foray into US television, the HBO limited series We Are Who We Are.

We Are Who We Are is a new coming-of-age story about two American teenagers (IT’s Jack Dylan Grazer and Jordan Kristine Seamon (in her debut) who live on an American Army base with their parents outside Venice, Italy. The series explores typical teenage drama themes of friendship, sexuality, love and overall confusion.

If that sounds more than a little bit like his breakthrough feature Call Me By Your Name (and the trailer gives off heavy CMBYN vibes), Guadagnino pushes back on that. “I will never complain about people’s laziness, but that sounds very lazy,” he told Variety. “‘Call Me By Your Name’ is about the past seen through the prism of a cinematic narrative and this is about the here and now. This is about the bodies and souls of now. I think they are so different.”

The limited series also stars Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee Chloë Sevigny (Boys Don’t Cry, Big Love), Kid Cudi (Westworld and How to Make It in America), Alice Braga (Queen of the South), Spence Moore II (All American), as well as newcomers Faith Alabi, Francesca Scorsese, Ben Taylor, Corey Knight, Tom Mercier and Sebastiano Pigazzi.

Guadagnino directs all eight episodes of the limited series and serves as the showrunner, executive producer and writer for the HBO-Sky Drama series. Joining Guadagnino will be executive producers Lorenzo Mieli (The Young Pope), Mario Gianani (The Young Pope), Nick Hall, Sean Conway (Ray Donovan), Riccardo Neri and Francesco Melzi d’Eril (Call Me By Your Name). Paolo Giordano and Francesca Manieri will also join Guadagnino as writers for the series.

HBO will premiere We Are Who We Are on September 14.