Synopsis
In 1980s Naples, Italy, an awkward Italian teen struggling to find his place experiences heartbreak and liberation after he's inadvertently saved from a freak accident by football legend Diego Maradona.
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Cast
- Filippo ScottiFabietto Schisa
- Toni ServilloSaverio Schisa
- Teresa SaponangeloMaria Schisa
- Luisa RanieriPatrizia
- Marlon JoubertMarchino Schisa
- Massimiliano GalloFranco
- Betti PedrazziBaronessa Focale
- Renato CarpentieriAlfredo
- Enzo De CaroSan Gennaro
- Sofya GershevichYulia
Recommendations
- 100
The Playlist
It’s a lovely, charming, vibrant, sad, bildungsroman tale and roman-fleuve that pays small tribute to Maradona. But more importantly, it manages to both memorialize this agonizing turning point in his life and warmly reminisce on the bliss that came before it. - 100
The Hollywood Reporter
It’s the work of a director in full command of his gifts, from the kaleidoscopic vignettes of family life that make the first half such a constant delight through the supple modulation of tone midway, when shocking tragedy prompts a shift into a more ruminative mood. - 83
IndieWire
The Hand of God doesn’t always find the clearest way of knotting these various stories together, and the film’s second half — replete with so many highs — also feels like it leaves a number of important characters dangling in the wind. - 80
Screen Daily
The boisterousness remains, as does the unreconstructed maleness that has often been a jarring mannerism in his work. But new intimacy also yields a lightness and tenderness that are a welcome addition to Sorrentino’s palette. - 80
The Telegraph
Sorrentino and his cast make these teenage recollections twinge with freshness. Like our own sharpest memories of adolescence, the haze of nostalgia doesn’t dull their edge. - 80
Time Out
Things in The Hand of God are often funny and sad – all at the same time. - 60
The Guardian
The Hand of God, no surprise, is Sorrentino’s most nakedly personal film to date, almost to a fault in the way it jettisons the cool distance of The Great Beauty or Il Divo in favour of a sweaty, close-up evocation of youth. It’s a picture only Sorrentino could make. But that doesn’t necessarily make him the safest pair of hands. - 58
The Film Stage
We might still miss Sorrentino’s prior, more unforgiving tone, and his sleek filmmaking style; it’s arguable this material doesn’t mine the best of his strengths.
