Do we like them?

Do we like Luca Guadagnino?

Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing harmful in his own words or acts turned up, and he's backed queer cinema publicly, but the record we could verify is thin.

Luca Guadagnino is the Italian director behind Call Me By Your Name, the sun-drenched queer love story that made him a household name with arthouse crowds. Since then he has moved between lush romance, horror and big-name star vehicles, and Venice has been treating him as one of its own, handing him its Glory to the Filmmaker Award this year.

The latest drama is commercial, not personal. Amazon MGM dropped his nearly finished film about OpenAI boss Sam Altman, Artificial, in June, with coverage linking it to Amazon's big investment in OpenAI. Amazon said it had the utmost respect for him and the film is being shopped to other studios, so this one is a business stoush, not a scandal about his behaviour.

On the harm check, nothing turned up. We found no remarks from him against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet, and no pattern of working with people who push harm. We also couldn't pull up his comments on wider politics, so we won't guess at them. What he has done is speak up for queer cinema: when Turkey banned Queer in 2024, he criticised the decision publicly.

The main criticism he copped is artistic rather than moral. Some critics and fans have pushed back on casting straight actors in queer roles, and on how much sex Call Me By Your Name showed on screen. He has defended the casting choices, saying he doesn't think it's his place to decide an actor's sexuality. Reasonable people can disagree on that, but it's a debate about craft.

On the good-person side, we found no lawsuits against him and no credible reports of him mistreating cast or crew, though we weren't able to dig as deeply as we'd like. This year he stood by Timothée Chalamet when the actor copped a backlash over his opera and ballet comments. He said Chalamet could have spared himself the fuss, but also that a single remark shouldn't become a planetary polemic. That's a loyal mate without a pile-on.

So: would we support him? Yes. His films give queer stories real screen time, he has been outspoken against censorship of them, and nothing nasty has surfaced. The caveat is that charity work and his off-screen politics are mostly a blank in what we could verify, so the score stops short of the top end.