Produced by HBO and RAI FICTION the new season of the series is based on the second book of Elena Ferrante’s bestselling quadrilogy
Miami, FL. July 9, 2019. The first official image from the HBO and RAI FICTION series, MY BRILLIANT FRIEND - THE STORY OF A NEW NAME, has been revealed featuring Margherita Mazzucco as Elena and Gaia Girace as Lila.
Based on Elena Ferrante’s second book of her four-part series published in the U.S. by Europa Editions, the show is being directed by returning director from season one, Saverio Costanzo (“Private,” “The Solitude of Prime Numbers,” “Hungry Hearts”). Costanzo will direct six episodes and Alice Rohrwacher (“Happy as Lazzaro”, “Le Meraviglie”) will direct two episodes.
The second chapter of MY BRILLIANT FRIEND, begins exactly where the series left off at the end of the first season. Lila and Elena are sixteen. Lila has just gotten married, but believes she has lost her own identity when she took her husband’s name. Elena is a model student, but while at Lila’s wedding, she realized she was not happy inside or outside her neighborhood.
During a holiday in Ischia, the two girls reunite with their old childhood acquaintance Nino Sarratore, now a university student with great expectations. The apparently random encounter will forever change the nature of their bond, projecting the girls into two completely different worlds. Lila becomes a skillful sales assistant in the elegant shoe shop in central Naples owned by the powerful Solara family; while Elena obstinately continues her studies and is prepared to leave town to go to University in Pisa.
In the second season of My Brilliant Friend, we will see the extreme vitality of the two girls’ youth and the giddying rhythm with which they follow each other, lose one another and find each other again.
MY BRILLIANT FRIEND is an HBO and RAI FICTION series, produced by Lorenzo Mieli and Mario Gianani for Wildside and by Domenico Procacci for Fandango, in collaboration with RAI FICTION and HBO Entertainment, in co-production with Umedia. Story and screenplays by Elena Ferrante, Francesco Piccolo, Laura Paolucci and Saverio Costanzo. Paolo Sorrentino and Jennifer Schuur are the executive producers. Fremantle will act as the international distributor in association with Rai Com.
The complete first season of MY BRILLIANT FRIEND can be re-watched on HBO GO.