Oscar-winning Italian director Paolo Sorrentino will both write and direct a new film, The Hand of God, for Netflix. While the plot’s specific details are being kept under wraps, the film is said to be very personal to Sorrentino. Additionally, the film will both take place and be shot in Naples, Sorrentino’s home town.
In a statement about the film, Sorrentino said, “I’m excited at the idea of filming in Naples again exactly twenty years after my first film. 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. I’m delighted to partake in this adventure with producer Lorenzo Mieli, his company The Apartment and Netflix. The mutual understanding between myself and Teresa Moneo, David Kosse and Scott Stuber from Netflix on the meaning of the film was immediate and dazzling. They made me feel at home, an ideal condition because this is precisely what this film means to me: going back home.”
Sorrentino most recently directed the HBO show The New Pope and the film Loro, based on the life on Silvio Berlusconi. Both Lorenzo Mieli will produce The Hand of God, with Mieli producing for The Apartment Pictures and Sorrentino producing under a Fremantle company.