But his characters here aren’t intellectuals, artists or tycoons in postcard-ready manors and villas, but mostly working-class Americans and Italians in a half-picturesque, half-industrial town that’s grown to embrace, if not love, the base and its exotic residents. Like much of Guadagnino’s recent filmography ( Call Me By Your Name, A Bigger Splash, I Am Love), We Are Who We Are is concerned with the lives of (English-speaking) non-Italians in Italy. Or the show could focus on their teenage neighbor Caitlin (newcomer Jordan Kristine Seamón), a tomboy whose entry into puberty endangers her close relationship with her gruff father Richard (Kid Cudi) - not that her lonely Nigerian mother, Jenny (Faith Alabi), whose acts of kindness are seldom repaid, is any less fascinating. Created, directed and co-written by Luca Guadagnino, the show initially follows 14-year-old Fraser (Jack Dylan Grazer), an artsy, temperamental kid from New York who appears destined for isolation and alienation in the conservative milieu of the base.īut the naturalistic eight-part drama could just as easily center on Fraser’s mom Sarah (Chloë Sevigny), a queer colonel tasked with overseeing the troubled base, but who seems barely equipped to deal with her only son’s occasional violent outbursts. The setting of the new HBO series We Are Who We Are - a fictional American army base in northeastern Italy, where nobody feels like they belong - is so steeped in narrative potential that almost any of its characters could make for a compelling protagonist.

We are who we are cast