Paolo Sorrentino’s ‘La Grazia’ to Open 2025 Venice Film Festival 

Sorrentino returns to the festival where he previously premiered "The Young Pope," "The New Pope," and "The Hand of God."

One of the first major dominoes of the autumn festival season has fallen, as the Venice International Film Festival has announced Paolo Sorrentino‘s new film “La Grazia” as its opening night selection.

Plot details have been kept under wraps, but the film stars Toni Servillo and Anna Ferzetti and is written and directed by Sorrentino.

Sorrentino has been a Venice regular for years, debuting projects like the 2021 film “The Hand of God” and TV shows “The Young Pope” and “The New Pope” at the festival. He won the festival’s grand jury prize for “The Hand of God.”

“I am very happy that the 82^nd Venice International Film Festival will open with the new and highly anticipated film by Paolo Sorrentino,” festival director Alberto Barbera said in a statement. “Paolo Sorrentino’s return in competition comes with a film destined to leave its mark for its great originality and powerful relevance to the present time, which the audiences of the Venice Film Festival will have the pleasure of discovering on opening night.”

“La Grazia” will mark a return to Venice for Sorrentino, who premiered his most recent film, the Italy-set “Parthenope,” at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

With “Parthenope,” which borrows its name from one of the sirens of Greek myth, Sorrentino is unusually preoccupied with the relationship between youth and great beauty,” IndieWire’s David Ehrlich wrote in his review. “This isn’t the first time that he’s pitted those twin intoxicants against each other, contrasting the ephemeral nature of human lust against the eternal spirit of the poetry, architecture, and deities we create in retaliation to that fact. In ‘Parthenope,’ however, the 53-year-old filmmaker dares to ask whether it’s possible to separate the two. More to the point: He questions whether people are capable of fully appreciating them both at the same time.”