IN advance of the Sundance Film Festival, Sony Pictures Classics has swooped in and scooped up worldwide rights to “Call Me by Your Name,” a gay love story directed by Italy’s Luca Guadagnino.

    Set to debut in the festival’s Premieres section Jan. 22, the film is based on Andre Aciman’s novel of the same name and stars Armie Hammer as a 24-year-old American scholar spending the summer of 1983 in Northern Italy, where he attracts the attention of a 17-year-old Jewish-American boy, played by Timothee Chalamet. Michael Stuhlbarg rounds out the cast as the boy’s father.

    Guadagnino’s “I Am Love” played Sundance in 2010, and he recently directed “A Bigger Splash” and the upcoming “Suspiria.” He co-wrote the screenplay of “Call Me by Your Name” with James Ivory and Walter Fasano. The film also contains original songs written and performed by Sufjan Stevens.

    “It is a very personal project, and making it was a moving journey,” said Guadagnino. “It is a film about the inexorable force of desire and love, as experienced through any path one might find on his/her way.”

    (SD-Agencies)