Remaking Perfect Strangers

By tracing how the chamber drama became a globally circulating remake phenomenon, Remaking Perfect Strangers positions Paolo Genovese's 2016 film Perfetti sconosciuti(Perfect Strangers) as a major case study in the global circulation of cinematic narrative.

Recognized as one of the most remade films in contemporary cinema, Perfetti sconosciuti provides this volume with a revealing framework through which to explore how stories travel across linguistic, cultural, and industrial contexts while retaining recognizable thematic and structural coherence. Bringing together scholars from film studies, adaptation studies, cultural studies, sociology, translation studies, and media industries research, Remaking PerfectStrangers investigates how the unusually adaptable narrative of Paolo Genovese's film has been reconfigured across multiple national cinemas.

The volume's central intervention lies in its reframing of remake culture beyond conventional models of original and copy. Rather than treating the remakes as secondary derivatives of a singular Italian source text, the essays collectively position them as culturally embedded recreations shaped by local social norms, industrial conditions, and ideological frameworks. In doing so, the collection contributes to wider debates about transnational cinema, media globalization, and intercultural communication, showing how globally circulating narratives are continually negotiated through processes of localization and reinterpretation.

At the heart of the book is the concept of "tradaptation," a hybrid process combining translation and adaptation. This framework enables contributors to move beyond questions of fidelity and instead examine how narrative elements are transformed across linguistic, cultural, economic, and political contexts. The collection argues that the remarkable international mobility of Perfect Strangers stems partly from its 'format-like' structure: a contained setting, ensemble cast, dialogue-driven narrative, and universally legible concerns surrounding intimacy, secrecy, trust, and digital exposure. Each remake preserves this underlying architecture while reshaping it according to local expectations and cultural anxieties.

The collection also foregrounds the broader significance of digital intimacy and mediated social life within contemporary global culture. Across the essays, Perfect Strangers emerges as a vehicle for examining how different societies negotiate questions of privacy, technology, gender relations, friendship, and public selfhood in the smartphone era. In this respect, the book contributes not only to adaptation and film studies, but also to wider conversations about digital culture, social behavior, and the transnational circulation of values and affect.