Paolo Sorrentino

...

Paolo Sorrentino's Hand of God or, you know, of course-

Yeah

... we know Fellini and all that, of Pedro Almodóvar, Pain and Glory.

When I was thinking of, you know, things I could recommend that wouldn't make you bad or [laughs] deformed, I thought Tintin.

Um, a film I'm very, very fond of is an Italian film called La Grande Bellezza by Paolo Sorrentino.

It came out in 2013.

Won the best film foreign, uh, category award for the Academy Awards that year.

Can you tell me a little bit more about the program that you were in?

Are you talking about the one with Paolo Sorrentino?

Yes.

I forgot his last name.

I'm like, "I think it's Paolo," but then I was also like, "What if I'm getting confused with the Lizzie McGuire movie?" [laughs]

[laughs] It was, this one was actually in Patagonia, not Italy, but he's Italian, and it was run by a Spanish production company called Playlab Films.

And it was a 10- or 11-day filmmaking intensive under the mentorship of Paolo Sorrentino, and we basically had to write, direct, shoot, edit, all in the 10 days and more or less alone.

I was lucky enough to have a friend who also, uh, got into the, the program separately, and she's a cinematographer, and I'm a director, of course, and we paired up.

Grazia.

It is a film by Paolo Sorrentino, a 2025 film where Tony Servillo plays Mariano De Santis, the Italian prime minister at the end of his term.

His wife, who he's recently discovered is unfaithful, was unfaithful, has died.

And he is wrestling with his final decision in office, possibly the most important and significant decision in his political career.

Moving on, we have a major movie that did not win awards.

The Great Beauty, La Grande Bellezza by Paolo Sorrentino from Italy in co-production with France.

We'll talk about Sorrentino more in this show when we talk about The Consequences of Love from 2004.

L'amico di famiglia.

So La Grazia literally means the grace, but also at the same time it means the pardon.

because the movie is about the President of the Republic, played by Tony Servillo, and the director is Paolo Sorrentino.

And this is his best work since The Great Beauty, that won the Academy Award for International Film.

What we can expect, Beth? Finally, we can see a good, moral, ethical politician at work.

If you watch that film, it's so architectural.

Italian films, or La Grande Bellezza, which is a Sorrentino film, which is very architectural.

So sometimes moments in a film will just capture my imagination and I'll hold on to that And I'll sort of bring that in when it's time to do a building.

And the scale and the way that the proportions worked in that actually helped me put spaces together.

And you will see, of course, my review on our website on santontimes.co.za, my review of...

Paolo Sorrentino's La Grazia, which is such an amazing movie.

I think there's only like one screening left to see.

The festival is happening in Durban, Pretoria, Cape Town, Joburg.

And it's called A Beloved, and it's also at the European Film Festival.

An absolute must-see if you enjoy serious cinema.

To circle back to Paolo Sorrentino quickly, another movie of his, his 2021 movie The Hand of God, is actually available to see on Netflix.

It's semi-autobiographical, and it also serves as a love letter to Naples, showing you parts of Naples that I think most people aren't even aware of.