26/06/2023 - Shooting is set to commence in Naples and Capri at the end of June on the Oscar-winning director’s new film, which relates the life of Partenope from the ‘50s to the present day

Director Paolo Sorrentino (© La Biennale di Venezia - Foto ASAC/Jacopo Salvi)

Spanning 1950 to the present day, the life of Partenope (in Greek mythology, the siren who founded the city of Naples), who shares her name with her city but is neither a siren nor a legend, is the plot of the tenth film - whose title is yet to be revealed - by Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino, who’ll be back on set at the end of June, filming between Naples and Capri. The director recently shot in Naples during the celebrations held for the football team’s third championship win, and this footage is due to be included in the film. The movie is a co-production between Italy and France by Lorenzo Mieli for The Apartment Pictures (of the Fremantle Group), Anthony Vaccarello for Saint Laurent, Paolo Sorrentino for Numero 10 and Ardavan Safaee for Pathé. International sales are entrusted to UTA and Fremantle.

Written by Sorrentino himself, the film charts the lengthy existence of its protagonist: “her carefree nature and her fainting, her classic beauty and her inevitable changes, her futile and impossible loves, her stale flirtations and the dizzying heights of love at first sight, night-time kisses in Capri, flashes of happiness and persistent pain, real and invented fathers, the end of things and new beginnings… Others: experienced, observed, loved; men and women, their melancholic tendencies and somewhat despondent eyes; episodes of impatience, losing hope of ever being able to laugh again at a distinguished man who trips and falls in a city centre street. Always accompanied by that faithful friend: the passing of time. And about Naples, which bewitches, enchants, screams, laughs, but also knows how to hurt you”, the director writes in his notes.

The cast includes Luisa Ranieri (previously seen in The Hand of God [+see also:
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Photography is entrusted to Daria D’Antonio, who previously worked with Sorrentino on The Hand of God, which won the Silver Lion - Grand Jury Prize in Venice in 2021, much like editor Cristiano Travaglioli.

The director’s most recent film, The Hand of God, was nominated for the Best International Film Oscar and won the David di Donatello for Best Film too. The director also presented The Young Pope and The New Pope [+see also:
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interview: Paolo Sorrentino
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interview: Paolo Sorrentino
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(Translated from Italian)