Paolo Sorrentino to direct ‘The Hand of God’ for Netflix
Academy Award winner Paulo Sorrentino is set to return to his home city of Naples for the upcoming Netflix feature The Hand of God, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The film — for which little information is available — is being produced by Lorenzo Mieli for The Apartment Pictures, a Fremantle company, and Sorrentino, who will write and direct.
"I’m excited at the idea of filming in Naples again exactly twenty years after my first film," said Sorrentino, who won the Oscar for best foreign language film for The Great Beauty in 2014.
"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."
The name and location of the film offers a strong hint that it could be very closely connected to Argentinian soccer legend Diego Maradona, who famously played for Napoli and earned the nickname "The Hand of God" following a goal scored against England in the 1986 World Cup. Sorrentino has previously spoken of his personal connection to the player, who was a character in his film Youth and whom he thanked in his Oscars acceptance speech for The Great Beauty.