Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino was BOTD in 1971. Born in Palermo, Sicily to an Italian father and an Algerian mother, he spent his early life in Ethiopia before returning to Sicily. He studied briefly at the University of Palermo before transferring to La Sapienza University in Rome. He released his debut feature film The Protagonists in 1999, the first of many collaborations with his lead actress Tilda Swinton. After an unhappy experience adapting Melissa Panarello’s memoir 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed, he rose to international attention with 2009’s Io Sono Amore (I Am Love), a melodrama starring Swinton as an Italian industrialist’s wife who has an affair with her adult son’s best friend. Notable for its luscious cinematography, lavish locations and forensic examination of a wealthy upper-middle-class milieu, the film won a number of international awards, established Guadagnino as a successor to his filmmaking heroes Luchino Visconti and Alfred Hitchcock. After a six-year sabbatical from feature filmmaking, he returned with A Bigger Splash, an erotic thriller about a glam rock star (Swinton) negotiating a love triangle with her current and ex-lovers. Guadagnino was vaulted to international fame with his 2017 film Call Me By Your Name, based on André Aciman‘s novel about a teenaged boy who falls in love with his father’s hunky research assistant. Praised for its languid pace and idyllic depiction of a world free of AIDS and homophobia, it became one of the year’s most acclaimed films, earning four Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Actor for its young star Timothée Chalamet, and winning for James Ivory‘s screenplay. Despite a now-famous scene where Chalamet’s character masturbates into a peach, many gay critics were unimpressed at Guadagnino’s reluctance to depict his actors having sex onscreen. His later films include a remake of the Italian horror film Suspiria, the teen cannibal romance Bones and All, winning him Best Director at the Venice Film Festival. His 2024 film Challengers, chronicling a bisexual love triangle set in the world of competitive tennis, again puzzled audiences and critics with its lack of onscreen sex. He answered his critics with his most recent film Queer, a sexually explicit adaptation of William S. Burroughs‘ Mexican-set novella about a gay writer pursuing an affair with a younger man, starring Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey. Openly gay since forever, Guadagnino was in an 11-year relationship with filmmaker Ferdinando Cito Filomarino until 2020. His current relationship status is unknown.