La Grazia
Director | Paolo Sorrentino
Duration | 133mins
Drama | Italian with English subtitles
Cast | Toni Servillo, Anna Ferzetti, Orlando Cinque, Massimo Venturiello, Milvia Marigliano, Giuseppe Gaiani
Presented by The Embassy of Italy, Wellington
Academy Award Winner Paolo Sorrentino possesses one of the most distinct, artful, and intelligent voices in contemporary cinema. With La Grazia, he continues to astonish audiences, but this time not only for his creative flourishes, but for an elegant, immensely thoughtful, and restrained meditation on power, morality, and legacy.
With majestic authority, Toni Servillo plays Mariano De Santis, President of the Italian Republic, in his final weeks in office. He wrestles with the legacy of his career and, for the first time, finds himself unable to make decisions. He must make a resolution on a euthanasia bill and decide whether to grant pardons for two convicted murderers. It’s in the extraordinary private and intimate sequences that we feel his grief for his now deceased wife and the scars left by her ancient infidelity.
‘La Grazia’ has the double meaning of a ‘legal pardon’ and the more spiritual significance of being in a ‘state of grace’. In La Grazia Sorrentino and his collaborator of over twenty-six years, Servillo, are indeed in a state of filmmaking grace.
Sorrentino has made some beauties in his career. This is one of his best.
Pete Hammond. Deadline
WINNER
Best Actor, Toni Servillo, Venice Film Festival
Best Film Pasinetti Award, Venice Film Festival
Best Film Italian Film in Venice, Venice Film Festival
Best Screenplay, Chicago International Film Festival
Special Prize, Anna Ferzetti, Venice Film Festival