Paolo Sorrentino: ‘What worries me is the scepticism about these wonderful aspects of our life, like sensuality and eroticism’

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long, long time, but I’ve always been sceptical about the possibility of turning the story into a film,” Sorrentino tells me over coffee during the London Film Festival. It was Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, he says, which was based on the director’s childhood in Mexico City, that gave him permission to commit his own experience to film: “I realised that a personal, private film could tell a universal story.” The Hand of God fictionalises the young Sorrentino as Fabietto Schisa, played by the newcomer Filippo Scotti. Plan auto-renews until cancelled Try for free open image in gallery Director Sorrentino with ‘The Hand of God’ actors Luisa Ranieri, Marlon Joubert, Filippo Scotti, Toni Servillo and Teresa Saponangelo If The Hand of God is a departure for Sorrentino, it also riffs on familiar themes: the lost and longing; the young and the old; religion; architecture; the sea; dancing; ruined nobility. After the fateful match in the 1986 World Cup, one of Fabietto’s uncles says the “Hand of God” incident is retribution for the Falklands war.