{"id":180670,"date":"2025-08-27T20:57:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T20:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/180670\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T20:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T20:57:10","slug":"paolo-sorrentinos-la-grazia-lands-standing-ovation-at-venice-opening-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/180670\/","title":{"rendered":"Paolo Sorrentino’s ‘La Grazia’ Lands Standing Ovation at Venice Opening Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe Italians love Paolo Sorrentino<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n\tHis latest drama \u201cLa Grazia,\u201d which kicked off the 82nd Venice Film Festival<\/a>, was met with a four-minute standing ovation on Wednesday night on the Lido.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe story of an aging politician dealing with his own mortality \u2014 and deciding two challenging clemency cases in his final days in office \u2014 brought the Venice crowd to their feet as Sorrentino clutched his chest and waved to his fans inside the Sala Grande Theatre. The audience was made largely of Italian officials and members of the industry with some star power in the form of Tilda Swinton and Cate Blanchett.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLa Grazia\u201d re-teams the Oscar-winning Sorrentino with his male muse and \u201cThe Great Beauty\u201d star, Toni Servillo, who has appeared in seven of the director\u2019s last 10 feature films to date. Servillo plays a fictional Italian president named Mariano De Santis, who is torn by doubts about whether he should sign a draft law that would allow euthanasia in the Catholic country.<\/p>\n

\n\tAhead of the premiere, Sorrentino \u2013 who made his debut at Venice in 2001 with Servillo-starrer \u201cOne Man Up\u201d \u2013 told Variety<\/a> about his decision to portray a positive example of a politician in the film.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEvery day in the news we read about decisions made by politicians that stem from impetuosity, show of force and strange twisted ideas about how the economy works,\u201d he said. \u201cInstead of this, I wanted to depict what a politician should be like.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring the opening night ceremony, Francis Ford Coppola presented Werner Herzog with a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement<\/a>. Coppola called the German cinema giant, known for films such as \u201cSigns of Life,\u201d \u201cNosferatu the Vampyre,\u201d \u201cAguirre, the Wrath of God\u201d and \u201cFitzcarraldo,\u201d an \u201cunlimited phenomenon working in every nook and corner in cinema.\u201d The event marked Coppola\u2019s first public appearance since undergoing a heart procedure in Rome earlier this month.<\/p>\n

\n\tOver the next 10 days, boatloads of A-list talent will disembark for what is set to be the most high-wattage celebration of cinema on the Lido in recent memory. Among the premieres on schedule are Luca Guadagnino\u2019s thriller \u201cAfter the Hunt,\u201d starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri; \u201cJay Kelly,\u201d a comedic drama from director Noah Baumbach and stars George Clooney and Adam Sandler; Guillermo del Toro\u2019s \u201cFrankenstein\u201d with Jacob Elordi and Oscar Isaac; as well as the latest Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone collaboration, \u201cBugonia.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf all these movies are here, it\u2019s because they were rejected by Cannes\u201d joked the opening night ceremony\u2019s host, actor and comedian Emanuela Fanelli, of the other most prominent European film festival.<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier in the day, the ongoing war in Gaza dominated the festival\u2019s jury press conference <\/a>where jury president Alexander Payne dodged a question about the conflict and how the festival should address it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI feel a little bit unprepared for that question,\u201d Payne said. \u201cI\u2019m here to judge and talk about cinema.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0In his brief speech during the ceremony, Payne said he encouraged his fellow jurors \u201cto consider that we know something about cinema, but also nothing at all. To look at each movie simultaneously with the eyes of a professional, but also with the eyes of a child who is perhaps seeing a movie for the very first time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Italians love Paolo Sorrentino. His latest drama \u201cLa Grazia,\u201d which kicked off the 82nd Venice Film Festival,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":180671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,2961,224,5337,30988,30989],"class_list":{"0":"post-180670","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-losangeles","13":"tag-paolo-sorrentino","14":"tag-venice-film-festival"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115102734313721307","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}