Film ‘It was the hand of God’ by Pablo Sorrentino candidate to represent Italy at the Oscars

The last film by Paolo Sorrentino, It was the hand of God (It was the hand of God), will represent Italy in the race for the Oscar in its 94th edition, announced today the commission in charge of the Italian team.

Sorrentino (Naples, 1970) has already won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2014 for The Great Beauty (La gran belleza).

This time he will do it with It was the hand of god, a film with which he won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize at the 78th Venice Film Festival this year, while its protagonist, Filippo Scotti, won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for emerging talent.

The commission that selects the Italian candidacy chose it among seventeen other films, among which was Three floors, with which Nanni Moretti competed at Cannes, and others like Ennio, Giuseppe Tornatore’s documentary about his friend Morricone.

Sorrentino aspires to enter the list with the fifteen films shortlisted by the Academy to compete for the best international film, which will be known on December 21, while the five finalists will be made public in February 2022.

The Oscars ceremony will take place on March 27, 2022 in Los Angeles.

Oscar winner for ‘The Great Beauty’ is an honorary citizen of Rome

It is the most personal film of the Neapolitan director, in which he recalls his adolescence and the tragic loss of his parents due to an escape of harmful gases from a fireplace from which he himself was saved by watching a Diego Armando Maradona game .

An episode that Sorrentino has always considered almost miraculous: “I believe in the semi-divine power of Maradona,” he acknowledged in Venice about the Pibe de Oro, a true deity in Naples.

“It was the hand of God”, which also has in its cast with its fetish actor, Toni Servillo, will hit Italian theaters from November 24, while on Netflix it will be available from December 15. (I)