Netflix, the world’s leading streaming service, is making massive waves this year with its content. Amazing new series are being added, both new and old, and the choice of movies is huge: this December (2021), the platform will be host to new film, The Hand of God.
Directed by Academy Award-winner writer (and director) Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty), The Hand of God is a story of a young man and his heartbreak and liberation in Naples, Italy, during the 1980s.
Sorrentino was born in Naples in 1970. His first full-length feature film, One Man Up, dates back to 2001 and was selected for the Venice Film Festival. In 2004, he directed The Consequences of Love and, in 2006, The Family Friend; both in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2008, with Il Divo, he returned to Cannes winning the Jury Prize.
He returned in competition at the Cannes Festival in 2011 with This Must be the Place and two years later with The Great Beauty, which won the Academy Award, the Golden Globe and the BAFTA Award for best Foreign Language Film, as well as three EFA Awards.
The movie follows Fabietto Schisa (Filippo Scotti), a rather awkward Italian teenager whose life and outlandish, spirited family are all of a sudden subdued by the surprising arrival of soccer legend Diego Maradona.
Maradona saves Schisa from an accident, which sets the young boy’s future in motion. Sorrentino returns to his hometown once again, to tell this tale of how fate can be a surprising, life-changing point in your life.
The Hand of God follows the narrative of Schisa, and depicts the story of family, sports and cinema, as well as love and loss.
The trailer shows this movie to be a stunning and genuine project, as the characters all seem to share a love and lust for life, while Schisa’s passions lie in cinema, and the magic that cam come from the big screen.
It seems that Sorrentino has created a wholesome and grounded movie, as the trailer shows us a whole manner of different people, and a community that appears to share a love for sports and the comradery that comes with it.
With all the blockbuster-type movies releasing this year, it will be nice to see a smaller independent film grace Netflix users’ screens. The Hand of God showcases raw emotion, genuine struggles and similar emotional turmoil that can grip a family and change their lives.
The Hand of God will premier on September 2nd, 2021, at the 78th Venice International Film Festival; the movie will hit Netflix and (select) cinemas on December 15th, 2021.
Written by Melissa, who you can follow on Twitter @melissajournal
RELATED: First look images of season three of Sex Education
Tagged in Netflix