Paolo Sorrentino and Toni Servillo are to open the Venice International Film Festival directed by Alberto Barbera (August 27 – September 6, 2025). "La Grazia" is the title of the opening film of the 82nd edition of the Festival.
After presenting "The Hand of God" at Venice 78, where it won the Grand Jury Prize, Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino, who won the Oscar for "The Great Beauty," opens this year's Venice Film Festival with his eleventh film, "La Grazia."
The film is, above all, a love story, which stars Toni Servillo as Mariano De Sanctis, President of the Italian Republic, and Anna Ferzetti as his daughter Doriana. It eschews a study of power relations and politics to examine the man, his intellectual passions, closest affections, and his nearness to crucial current issues, like euthanasia. In this sense, the Quirinale, the austere seat of the President and symbol of the Italian State, is depicted in its least institutional aspect.
“I am delighted that the 82nd Venice International Film Festival is opening with Paolo Sorrentino’s new, highly anticipated film,” says Alberto Barbera. “I’m happy to note that he, one of Italy’s most important and internationally acclaimed filmmakers made his debut at the Venice Biennale in 2001 with his first film, One Man Up, during my first years as Artistic Director. This bond with the Festival has been strengthened over the years with the out-of-competition screening of episodes of The Young Pope (seasons one and two) and, then, with The Hand of God, which won the Silver Lion - Grand Jury Prize in 2021. Paolo Sorrentino’s return to competition is with a film destined to leave its mark for its great originality and strong relevance to the present, which Festival audiences will have the pleasure of discovering on opening night.”
Inspired stylistically by Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue, the story in La Grazia was sparked by the news of President Mattarella granting of clemency to a man who had killed his Alzheimer’s afflicted wife. "It seemed like an interesting moral dilemma to me," Sorrentino said at a press conference in Venice. "I've believed that moral dilemmas provide a more formidable narrative engine than any other narrative tool for years. That is where the idea of ??focusing the film on a President of the Republic came from. La Grazia encapsulates a sort of loving approach to the world and life, so I wanted to portray a person behind the serious and rigorous appearance of a President, who is actually in love not only with his deceased wife and his daughter, but also with the law and a series of values ??that politics should embody, but that are increasingly rarely even glimpsed. This is why I liked the idea of ??depicting a politician who embodies the lofty ideals of ??politics as they should be, but too often are not."
"I don't think I have anything in common with Mariano De Sanctis," says Toni Servillo of his role, "which is why he's a character I love deeply. I like to remember when, many years ago, Paolo and I came to Venice together, with a certain recklessness linked to our youth with One Man Up, and it's wonderful to return here with a film in competition at the opening of the Venice Film Festival and with such a complex character, who recalls other beautiful characters, but isn't satisfied with what we've already done."
Annamaria Morelli of The Apartment notes that La Grazia was filmed in Rome, with several exterior shots of the Quirinale, but also in Turin, Milan, Teatro alla Scala, and a chapel in Modena. "The beauty of working with Paolo lies in seeking beauty," said Morelli.
Regarding the Quirinale, Sorrentino notes: "we wanted this film to focus less on the rituals or a description of life at the Quirinale. On the contrary, we were interested in portraying the Quirinale as a place of solitude, giving it less of the institutional character one might expect from such a a symbolic place."
La Grazia, written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino, is a Fremantle film, produced by The Apartment, a Fremantle group company, Numero 10, and PiperFilm, which will distribute the film in Italy. MUBI holds the worldwide rights, excluding Italy. The Match Factory is handling international sales.
Filming began in Turin in March 2025 with the support of Film Commission Torino Piemonte, in: Castello del Valentino, Castello di Moncalieri, Palazzo Chiablese, the Polytechnic of Turin, the Accademia delle Belle Arti, the Egyptian Museum and the bowling rink at the Treasury. Filming continued in Piazza di Spagna in Rome and was completed by early May 2025.