“It was the hand of God” by Paolo Sorrentino is the film that will represent Italy in the selection for the best international film at the Oscars.
This was decided by the ANICA selection commission at the request of the Academy.
The film was chosen from among the 18 whose nominations had been proposed among those distributed in Italy or in anticipation of being distributed between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2021. Among others, in the running there were also "I Giants ”by Bonifacio Angius and“ Ariaferma ”by Leonardo Di Costanzo, shot in the former prison of Sassari.
The official announcement of the nominations is scheduled for February 8, 2022 while the Academy Awards ceremony is scheduled for March 27 in Los Angeles.
THE FILM - “It was the hand of God” is the painful story of Sorrentino's childhood, his parents, his relatives, his city. A self-analysis film that is a declared homage to Federico Fellini, almost a Sorrentine Amarcord, a homage to his Naples and, needless to say, to Maradona who would have saved him from death.
In 1987, in fact, to attend a Napoli football match and see the Pibe de Oro in action, the 17-year-old super fan director did not follow, for once, his parents who, like every weekend, go to the mountains. In the Roccaraso house, the couple is killed by a loss of carbon monoxide, leaving him orphaned. And here the strongest scene of the whole film: the race of Fabietto Schisa (aka Sorrentino, played by Filippo Scotti) together with his brother (Marlon Joubert) at the hospital to discover, after a long embarrassment of the doctors, that both parents ( Toni Servillo and Teresa Saponangelo) are dead.
(Unioneonline / vl)
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