16.10.11 Paolo Sorrentino

Paolo Sorrentino, born in Naples in 1970, is a director, screenwriter and novelist. He started out in 1995 with the short film Un Paradiso, which was well received at the Palermo Film Festival. Shortly after he began working with Antonio Capuano and Stefano Incerti, and wrote scripts for La Squadra on RAI television. His first feature film was One Man Up, which transformed Sorrentino into Italian cinema's most promising new talent; shown to great acclaim at the Venice Festival, the film took the Nastro D'Argento for best new director and the Ciak D'Oro. The film also marked the start of a collaborative relationship with Toni Servillo who would go on to give magisterial portrayals of some of Sorrentino's most memorable characters.

And Servillo was in fact the taciturn protagonist of his next film, The Consequences of Love: this time Sorrentino alighted at the Cannes Festival and enjoyed great success despite bringing no prizes home. In Italy however it scooped up five David di Donatello awards and three Nastri D'Argento.
Sorrentino was by now a well established director: Rai Due invited him to make a television version of Eduardo de Filippo's Saturday, Sunday, Monday, again with Servillo in the lead role. Then he got back behind the camera to direct Giacomo Rizzo and Laura Chiatti in the effective The Family Friend, which was selected for Cannes. The Neapolitan director found himself once again on the croisette with Il Divo, the Giulio Andreotti biopic that finally earned him the Cannes Jury Prize and led to international renown.

The jury president of that Cannes Festival was Sean Penn: the two got to know each other and from there the idea for This Must Be The Place was born. This was Sorrentino's fifth feature film, shot in the United States and released in cinemas this year.

Sorrentino is also a writer of fiction, and in 2010 he published his first novel, Hanno tutti ragione, which was shortlisted for the Premio Strega 2010.