Paolo Sorrentino's 'La Grazia' to open Venice Film Festival

Oscar-winning Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino will open this year's Venice Film Festival with his new movie "La Grazia", organisers said on Friday. Sorrentino, 55, is known for films such as "Il Divo", "The Great Beauty" and "The Hand of God", a deeply personal movie about losing his parents as a teenager, which took the runner-up Grand Jury Prize at the 2021 festival.

"La Grazia" ("Grace"), which Sorrentino also wrote, will screen in competition at this year's event, which kicks off on August 27 and takes place on the Venice Lido, a thin barrier island in the Venetian Lagoon.

It stars his longtime collaborator Toni Servillo and actress Anna Ferzetti.

Little is known about the film. Sorrentino has previously been quoted as saying he and Servillo wanted to make a Francois Truffaut-style love story.

"Paolo Sorrentino’s return in competition comes with a film destined to leave its mark for its great originality and powerful relevance to the present time," the festival's artistic director Alberto Barbera said in a statement.

The Naples-born Sorrentino debuted his first feature film, "One Man Up", in Venice in 2001. He has also previously presented the first episodes of his television series "The Young Pope" at the festival. "The Great Beauty", about an ageing writer's reflections on life and his search for meaning among Rome's idle rich, won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2014. Sorrentino picked up his second Oscar nomination for "The Hand of God".

The 82nd Venice Film Festival will run from August 27 to September 6.

Reuters