LA GRAZIA | Italienischer Filmclub - Black Box im Filmmuseum Düsseldorf

LA GRAZIA

2025 · 131 min · Original Version with Subtitles · digitalDCP · FSK 12 · Director/Screenplay: Paolo Sorrentino · Cinematography: Daria D’Antonio · Cast: Toni Servillo, Anna Ferzetti, Orlando Cinque, Massimo Venturiello, Milvia Marigliano, and others

An Italian president in the final months of his term: With LA GRAZIA, Paolo Sorrentino once again chooses a figure of power as a canvas for moral and existential questions. Mariano De Santis must decide on an assisted-suicide law and two clemency petitions, while at the same time being haunted by memories of his late wife—a political drama that consistently spills over into the personal realm.

In this way, the film fits squarely within Sorrentino’s body of work. As in IL DIVO (2008) or LORO (2018), he is less interested in political analysis than in the inner state of the powerful: loneliness, self-presentation, and an awareness of transience. At the same time, *LA GRAZIA* continues the melancholic search for beauty that has defined his cinema since at least *LA GRANDE BELLEZZA* (2013). Formally, too, Sorrentino emphasizes continuity: once again, he works with Toni Servillo, his longtime leading actor. As the opening film of the 2025 Biennale Cinema, LA GRAZIA thus marks not so much a break as a distillation of central Sorrentino motifs—power as a stage and conscience as an abyss.

Introduction: Marisa & Joachim Manzin (Filmforum – Friends of the Film Museum)