The Oscar-winning director returns to write and direct in his hometown of Naples after twenty years
Netflix announced that Paolo Sorrentino will write and direct the new original movie for the streaming service. In 2014, the Italian director won the Academy Award for ‘Best Foreign Language Film’ with ‘The Great Beauty‘. And he is internationally renown for movies such as ‘The Consequences of Love’, ‘Il Divo’, and ‘Youth’. He also created, wrote, and directed the HBO series ‘The Young Pope’ and ‘The New Pope.’
The title of his new feature for Netflix will be ‘The Hand of God’.
And Sorrentino will co-produce it with Lorenzo Mieli of The Apartment Pictures in Naples, the director’s hometown.
“I’m excited at the idea of filming in Naples again, exactly twenty years after my first film,” Sorrentino said, referencing his 2001 movie, ‘One Man Up.’ “’The Hand of God’ represents, for the first time in my career, an intimate and personal film, a novel of formation at once light-hearted and painful,” he added. “I’m delighted to partake in this adventure with producer Lorenzo Mieli, his company, The Apartment, and Netflix. The agreement with Teresa Moneo, David Kosse, and Scott Stuber from Netflix, about the meaning of this film, was immediate and dazzling. They made me feel at home, an ideal condition, because this film, for me, means exactly this: coming home.”
Little is still known about the plot of ‘The Hand of God.’ However, the location and the title seem to refer to a connection with Diego Armando Maradona. The Neapolitan director is so attached to the former soccer-player that he mentioned him during his speech when he collected his Oscar in 2014. Maradona got his nickname, ‘La mano de Dios’, after the historic goal he scored with his hand at the 1986 World Cup.
Ilona Catani Scarlett