Paolo Sorrentino, the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, is, in the words of The New York Times, “one of Italy’s leading contemporary directors,” and, as The Guardian put it, “arguably the leader of a new-ish wave of exciting Italian directors.” The recipient of five David di Donatello awards and six Nastro d’Argento awards, he is best known for 2013’s The Great Beauty, his country’s entry for the best foreign language film Oscar (now known as the best international feature film Oscar) and won that award. And his latest film, 2021’s largely autobiographical dramedy The Hand of God, which is available on Netflix, won the Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion, or Grand Jury Prize, en route to being submitted by Italy for that same Oscar, for which it has since been nominated.
The American Cinematheque declared of this maestro, “Few Italian filmmakers since Fellini have paired sumptuous visual style with piquant social commentary as effectively.” To him, The Guardian attributed “one of the most distinctive signatures in cinema: fluid, audacious camera moves, grand tableaux vivants, montages cut like music videos, garish grotesques and sleek, modernist spaces.” And Sean Penn said, “I’m dazzled by this director.”
Over the course of this episode, the 51-year-old reflects on the tragedy that struck his family when he was just 16, around which The Hand of God revolves, and how it set him on his path to becoming a filmmaker; how he came to work regularly with the Italian actor Toni Servillo, who has starred in six of his nine features, including The Hand of God; why he decided to revisit the most painful chapter of his life in The Hand of God, and how doing so has affected him; plus much more.
Source: Hollywood
