Paolo Sorrentino gets personal in first trailer for Venice-bound ‘The Hand of God’

Ahead of its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Netflix has revealed the first trailer for The Hand of God from Paolo Sorrentino, director and writer of the Academy Award-winning The Great Beauty.

Semi-autobiographical in nature, the story of a young man’s heartbreak and liberation in 1980s Naples, Italy. The Hand of God follows Fabietto Schisa, an awkward Italian teen whose life and vibrant, eccentric family are suddenly upended—first by the electrifying arrival of soccer legend Diego Maradona and then by a shocking accident from which Maradona inadvertently saves Fabietto, setting his future in motion. Sorrentino returns to his hometown to tell his most personal story, a tale of fate and family, sports and cinema, love and loss.

Breakthrough find Filippo Scotti plays Fabietto, a stand-in for a young Sorrentino alongside Teresa Saponangelo, Marlon Joubert, Luisa Ranieri and Sorrentino regular Toni Servillo. The film is produced by Lorenzo Mieli And Paolo Sorrentino, and executive produced by Elena Recchia, Gennaro Formisano and Riccardo Neri.

The Hand of God will set sail for the Venice Film Festival on September 2 then head to the Telluride Film Festival the same week before appearing in select cinemas in Italy on 11/24 and in the rest of the world from 12/3 then landing on Netflix December 15, 2021.

Photo courtesy of Gianni Fiorito/Netflix

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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