The Hand of God: Between Tragedy and Hope

Directed by Academy Award-winner Paolo Sorrentino, "The Hand of God" (È stata la mano di Dio, 2021) is undoubtedly his most intimate and deeply personal film to date. Set in the vibrant, chaotic city of Naples during the 1980s, the film is part coming-of-age memoir and part love letter to the city and legendary footballer Diego Maradona, whose arrival at Napoli upends the town’s daily rhythms. The narrative follows teenager Fabietto Schisa as he navigates the tumultuous joys of his eccentric family and the sudden devastation of unspeakable tragedy.

Abandoning much of the lavish, Felliniesque visual embellishments found in earlier hits like "The Great Beauty", Sorrentino adopts a far more grounded and vulnerable approach to this storytelling. The sun-drenched, Mediterranean cinematography contrasts beautifully with the profound grief at its core. Filippo Scotti, playing the young Fabietto, alongside Sorrentino’s frequent collaborator Toni Servillo, delivers incredibly authentic and emotionally devastating performances.

Selected as Italy's official entry for the Oscars, "The Hand of God" is a moving exploration of how fate operates in the most painful ways, forcing us to find salvation and rebirth in creativity and cinema as much as in the inscrutable "hand of God".