Rome: The winning duo of Paolo Sorrentino and Toni Servillo is back: the director who won an Oscar in 2014 for La Grande Bellezza will return to direct the actor who played the film’s world-weary Roman journalist protagonist Jep Gambardella in a new project entitled La Grazia. The film will be Sorrentino’s eleventh and his last since his latest ode to his native Naples, Parthenope, which topped the Italian box office this year.
According to Ansa News Agency, La Grazia is the seventh collaboration between the 65-year-old Servillo and the 54-year-old Sorrentino. Their first collaboration was L’Uomo in Piu’ in 2001, where Servillo played Antonio ‘Tony’ Pisapia, a Neapolitan pop singer. Among Servillo’s roles for Sorrentino, he was widely acclaimed for his performances in Le Conseguenze dell’Amore in 2004, Il Divo in 2008, and Loro in 2018.
Sorrentino, who has also directed episodes of the TV series Il Giovane Papa and Il Nuovo Papa, received an Oscar nomination in 2022 for E’Stata la Mano di Dio, a film dedica
ted to Naples. In that film, Servillo portrayed Saverio Schisa, the father of the protagonist, Fabietto Schisa, a representation of the director’s younger self.
Details about the plot of La Grazia have not been disclosed other than it being a love story set in Italy. Sorrentino will also write the screenplay, with filming anticipated to begin in spring 2025. La Grazia is a Fremantle film produced by Annamaria Morelli for The Apartment, a Fremantle company, and Sorrentino’s own Numero 10, in association with PiperFilm. The new film will be released in Italy by PiperFilm.
Parthenope was acquired prior to its Cannes debut by A24, which will distribute it in the United States starting February 7.
