Paolo Sorrentino

Paolo Sorrentino (Italian: [ˈpaːolo sorrenˈtiːno]; born 31 May 1970; Naples) is an Italian film director, screenwriter, and writer. He is considered one of the most prominent filmmakers of Italian cinema working today. He is known for visually striking and complex dramas and has often been compared to Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. He has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, BAFTA Award two Cannes Film Festival prizes, four Venice Film Festival Awards and four European Film Awards. In Italy he was honoured with eight David di Donatello and six Nastro d'Argento. Sorrentino made his directorial film debut with the Italian comedy-drama One Man Up (2001) for which he received the Nastro d'Argento for Best New Director followed by The Consequences of Love (2004), The Family Friend (2006), and This Must Be the Place (2011). The biographical drama Il Divo (2009) was awarded the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize. He received critical acclaim with the art drama The Great Beauty (2013) which won the Academy Award, the Golden Globe, and the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He followed with Youth (2015), Loro (2018), and The Hand of God (2021) the latter of which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. He is also known for his work on television creating and directing the HBO drama series The Young Pope (2016), and The New Pope (2019). He worked with songwriters Antonello Venditti, Paloma Faith and Mark Kozelek and written three books published in Italian. He works with authors and producers including Francesca Cima and Nicola Giuliano, Toni Servillo and Luca Bigazzi. Actors in his films have included Sabrina Ferilli, Michael Caine, Fanny Ardant, Harvey Keitel, Isabella Ferrari, Elena Sofia Ricci, Sean Penn, Riccardo Scamarcio, Jude Law, Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Nanni Moretti, Filippo Scotti, Carlo Verdone, Antonio Albanese, Frank Langella and Jane Fonda.

Works

We Are Cinema

An Italian documentary about Italian cinema.

Release Date2021-12-16

CharacterSelf (archive footage)

Vote Count1

Boris

Boris is an Italian television series created by Luca Manzi and Carlo Mazzotta, initially produced from 2007 to 2010, with a revival season premiered in 2022. The show brings to the stage the behind the scenes of a television set where a troupe is shooting Gli occhi del cuore 2 (The eyes of the heart 2), a satirical portrait of the many fictions airing on the Italian TV networks.

Release Date2007-04-16

Characterhimself

Episode Count1

Vote Count213

Mussolini – Son of the Century

Chronicling the rise to power of Benito Mussolini, from 1919 to the assassination of Giacomo Matteotti.

Release Date2025-01-10

DepartmentProduction

JobExecutive Producer

Episode Count8

Vote Count120

My Brilliant Friend

When the most important friend in her life seems to have disappeared without a trace, Elena Greco, a now-elderly woman immersed in a house full of books, turns on her computer and starts writing the story of their friendship.

Release Date2018-11-27

DepartmentProduction

JobExecutive Producer

Episode Count24

Vote Count199

GialappaShow

Marco Santin and Giorgio Gherarducci - supported in the studio by Mago Forest, a great cast of comedians and many surprise guests - comment with biting irony on the most popular TV programs, the main sporting events and the last web trends.

Release Date2023-05-21

Episode Count1

Vote Count8

Le voci di dentro

Alberto Saporito spent a very eventful night. His friend Aniello Amitrano was brutally killed and his body was hidden by his neighbors, the Cimmarutas. But he can't remember if it was just a dream or if he actually lived it. That's why he shows up early to the police to file a complaint. However, he doesn't know that his gesture will be the fuse that will cause chaos to explode. Just like his uncle Nicola does with his firecrackers. The uncle has in fact decided to stop talking, because the degradation in which humanity finds itself repels him, and is expressed only through his pyrotechnic language.

Release Date2014-11-02

DepartmentDirecting

JobStage Director

Vote Count6

Massimo Troisi: Somebody Down There Likes Me

The life of a dying young man at the short age of only forty-one after playing the lead in Il postino. He was a brilliant stage actor before becoming an astonishing film director.

Release Date2023-02-23

CharacterSé stesso

Vote Count45

The Young Pope

Lenny Belardo, the youngest and first American Pope in the history of the Church, must establish his new papacy and navigate the power struggles of the closed, secretive Vatican.

Release Date2016-10-21

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count10

Vote Count585

Il Divo

Italy, early '90s. Calm, clever and inscrutable, politician Giulio Andreotti has been synonymous with power for decades. He has survived everything: electoral battles, terrorist massacres, loss of friends, slanderous accusations; but now certain repentant mobsters implicate him in the crimes of Cosa Nostra.

Release Date2008-05-28

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count1140

Call My Agent - Italia

Welcome behind the scenes of Italian show business from the point of view of those in charge of managing the careers - and lives - of the stars: the agents. Lea, Gabriele, Vittorio and Elvira are the soul of CMA and they give their souls to it, ready for anything to make their stars shine. Managers, friends, confidants and psychologists: a good agent is all that and more. And they, each with their own style, are the best. Between hectic days and mundane nights, it's their personal lives that lose out -- but deep down they have too much fun to notice. With the departure of founder Claudio Maiorana, however, things will get a little more complicated.

Release Date2023-01-20

Episode Count1

Vote Count30

The New Pope

As Pope Pius XIII hangs between life and death in a coma, charming and sophisticated moderate English aristocrat Sir John Brannox is placed on the papal throne and adopts the name John Paul III. A sequel series to “The Young Pope.”

Release Date2020-01-10

DepartmentProduction

JobExecutive Producer

Episode Count9

Vote Count266

The Consequences of Love

Lugano, Switzerland. Titta Di Girolamo is a discreet and sullen man who has been living for almost a decade in a modest hotel room, a prisoner of an atrocious routine, apparently without purpose. His past is a mystery, nobody knows what he does for a living, he answers indiscreet questions evasively. What secrets does this enigmatic man hide?

Release Date2004-09-24

DepartmentWriting

JobScreenplay

Vote Count857

The Hand of God

In 1980s Naples, Italy, an awkward Italian teen struggling to find his place experiences heartbreak and liberation after he's inadvertently saved from a freak accident by football legend Diego Maradona.

Release Date2021-11-24

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count1690

The Great Beauty

Jep Gambardella has seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades, but after his 65th birthday and a shock from the past, Jep looks past the nightclubs and parties to find a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.

Release Date2013-05-21

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

CharacterComparsa

Vote Count3159

Cercando La grande bellezza

Drama, documentary

Release Date2015-10-24

CharacterSelf

Vote Count15

Saturday, Sunday & Monday

Although this sounds like a weekend like many others, in the Prior house the atmosphere is rather tense because of some nervousness on the part of individual members of the family, especially the father, Peppino, who gets angry with anyone who happens to shoot: with their children, Juliana and Roberto, and his sister, aunt Meme. Meanwhile, his wife Rosa is dedicated to the preparation of the sauce, which she will serve for Sunday's lunch, to which she invited the neighbors, the accountant Ianniello and his wife.

Release Date2004-12-25

DepartmentDirecting

JobStage Director

Vote Count11

The Family Friend

Geremia, an aging tailor/money lender, is a repulsive, mean, stingy man who lives alone in his shabby house with his scornful, bedridden mother. He has a morbid, obsessive relationship with money and he uses it to insinuate himself into other people's affairs, pretending to be the "family friend". One day he is asked by a man to lend him money for the wedding of Rosalba, his daughter. Geremia falls in love at first sight with the bewitching creature and and soon indulges in a "beauty and the beast" relationship...

Release Date2006-10-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count294

One Man Up

Two men, both named Antonio Pisapia, see their lives go downhill in 1980s Naples. One is a crooner embroiled in a sex scandal; the other is a football player whose career is cut short by an injury.

Release Date2001-08-31

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count255

Loro 2

"Loro", in two parts, is a period movie that chronicles, as a fiction story, events likely happened in Italy (or even made up) between 2006 and 2010. "Loro" wants to suggest in portraits and glimps, through a composite constellation of characters, a moment in history, now definitively ended, which can be described in a very summary picture of the events as amoral, decadent but extraordinarily alive. Additionally, "Loro" wishes to tell the story of some Italians, fresh and ancient people at the same time: souls from a modern imaginary Purgatory who, moved by heterogeneous intents like ambition, admiration, affection, curiosity, personal interests, establish to try and orbit around the walking Paradise that is the man named Silvio Berlusconi.

Release Date2018-05-10

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count375

What Do You Know About Me

Until the 1970s, Italian cinema dominated the international scene, even competing with Hollywood. Then, in just a few years, came its rapid decline, the flight of our greatest producers, a crisis among the best writer-directors, the collapse of production. But what are the true causes and circumstances of this decline? In an attempt to provide an answer to this question, Di Me Cosa Ne Sai strives to depict this great cultural change. Begun as a loving examination of Italian cinema, the film transformed into a docu-drama that alternates between interviews with the great names of the past and fragments of cultural and political life of the last 30 years. It is a travel diary that shows Italy from north to south, through movie theatres; television-addicted kids; Berlusconi and Fellini; shopping centers; TV news editors; stories of impassioned film exhibitors and directors who fight for their films; and interviews with itinerant projectionists and great European directors.

Release Date2009-10-16

CharacterSelf

Vote Count2

This Must Be the Place

A bored, retired rock star sets out to find his father's tormentor, an ex-Nazi war criminal who is a refugee in the U.S.

Release Date2011-08-24

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count1246

Roma, santa e dannata

Release Date2023-11-06

DepartmentWriting

JobCreative Producer

Vote Count4

Youth

Two lifelong friends bond whilst vacationing in a luxury Swiss Alps lodge as they ponder retirement. While Fred has no plans to resume his musical career despite the urging of his loving daughter Lena, Mick is intent on finishing the screenplay for what may be his last important film for his muse Brenda. And where will inspiration lead their younger friend Jimmy, an actor grasping to make sense of his next performance?

Release Date2015-05-20

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count2098

Parthenope

Parthenope, born in the sea near Naples in 1950, is beautiful, enigmatic, and intelligent. She is shamelessly courted by many. However, beauty comes at a cost.

Release Date2024-10-24

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count570

Loro 1

Release Date2018-04-24

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count529

Little Adventure in Rome

Rome, outdoors, at night. A photographer is frantically shooting a fashion feature, with the Colosseum in the backdrop, when the unexpected occurs: the camera jams and the lens has to be changed.

Release Date2018-10-12

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count5

Loro

Internationally released Director's Cut of "Loro 1" and "Loro 2", which were released separately as two movies in Italy. The film talks about the group of businessmen and politicians – the Loro (Them) from the title – who live and act near to media tycoon and politician Silvio Berlusconi in the years between 2006 and 2009.

Release Date2018-09-13

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count314

The Caiman

Bruno Bonomo was a famous producer of B-movies in the ‘70s. After a long hiatus, Bonomo offers a screenplay to RAI centered on the figure of Italy’s prime minister and media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, a subject so controversial that even the public television broadcaster refuses to produce it

Release Date2006-03-24

Characteril marito di Aidra in "Cataratte"

Vote Count262

The Hand of God: Through the Eyes of Sorrentino

Director Paolo Sorrentino returns to Naples, his hometown, and reflects on his youth in an exclusive tour of the locations of “The Hand of God”.

Release Date2021-12-10

CharacterSelf

Vote Count36

Killer in Red

A man who looks like many others enters a bar to meet a girl. As he waits for her, the bartender tells him about Floyd, a former bartender from the late '70s.

Release Date2017-01-24

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count2

Cinque mondi

Roberto Benigni, Bernardo Bertolucci, Gabriele Salvatores, Paolo Sorrentino and Giuseppe Tornatore talk about their idea of cinema.

Release Date2016-10-10

CharacterSelf

Vote Count3

The Other Half

It tells the story of an elderly woman, confined in a nursing home because of her poor health. Her daughters do not want to take her to the wedding of her granddaughter. The woman, with the complicity of a nurse, escaped from there, determined at all costs to attend the wedding of her granddaughter.

Release Date2009-12-03

DepartmentCrew

JobPresenter

Vote Count4

Amanda

Amanda, 24, lives mostly isolated and has never had any friends, even if it's the thing she wants the most. Amanda chooses her new mission as to convince her childhood friend to believe that they are still best friends.

Release Date2022-10-13

DepartmentCrew

JobThanks

Vote Count66

A Matter of Heart

Garage owner Angelo and big-time film producer Alberto find themselves occupying neighbouring beds in a Rome hospital after suffering heart attacks. Alberto is a gregarious joker - and chain smoker - who has a strong effect on the impressionable Angelo. However, as one of the men's condition deteriorates, the other becomes more deeply involved in his personal life.

Release Date2009-04-17

Characterse stesso

Vote Count86

The Dream

Valeria follows her parents in a jewelry shop during closure time.

Release Date2014-01-01

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count1

Room 999

In 1982, Wim Wenders asked 16 of his fellow directors to speak on the future of cinema, resulting in the film Room 666. Now, 40 years later, in Cannes, director Lubna Playoust asks Wim Wenders himself and a new generation of filmmakers (James Gray, Rebecca Zlotowski, Claire Denis, Olivier Assayas, Nadav Lapid, Asghar Farhadi, Alice Rohrwacher and more) the same question: “is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?”

Release Date2023-10-05

CharacterSelf

Vote Count5

Homemade

Acclaimed filmmakers from around the world channel their creativity during COVID-19 isolation with this diverse, genre-spanning collection of short films.

Release Date2020-06-30

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Episode Count1

Vote Count23

The Flood

1792. Louis XVI, his wife Marie Antoinette, and their children have been arrested and imprisoned in the Tour du Temple, a sinister chateau in Paris, awaiting their trial. Far from the splendour of Versailles, they are isolated and vulnerable for the first time in their lives.

Release Date2024-11-21

DepartmentProduction

JobAssociate Producer

Vote Count33

Paradise

A short film by Paolo Sorrentino and Stefano Russo.

Release Date1994-03-08

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count4

Love Has No Bounds

A camorrista follows a surreal path.

Release Date1998-11-25

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count7

The Slow Game

In an atmosphere between fiction and reality, a rugby game in the suburbs becomes the allegory of the daily struggle of an Italian family against the trials and tribulations of life.

Release Date2009-03-27

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count1

Rio, I Love You

The third episode of the Cities of Love franchise, Rio, I Love You is an anthology, created by 10 visionary directors from across the globe. The story line of each segment focuses on an encounter of love in a different neighborhood of the city, demonstrating the distinctive qualities and character of that location. The film serves to bridge gaps between cultures, educating and entertaining the audience, while celebrating unique and universal expressions of love.

Release Date2014-09-12

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count45

The Dust of Naples

The title deliberatly recalls the famous L'oro di Napoli (Napoli's Gold) by Vittorio De Sica (1954). Alike De Sica's film here Naples is the real protagonist: Naples and its dust, not its gold. Through five episodes expressing different aspects of Naples, we have a picture of the town that doesn't belong to the postcard stereotypes...

Release Date1998-06-01

DepartmentWriting

JobScreenplay

Vote Count10

I Told You So

In Rome, during a January weekend a sudden heatwave arrives. The sun is initially pleasant, but the heat quickly escalates to a frightening degree, resulting in people and animals losing self-control.

Release Date2024-02-01

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count17

Three Touches

Several actors are members of a amateur soccer team. They followed in their preparations for a particular audition and in their personal life. With about 6 actors this delivers a broad picture of Italian life in which the question what it means to be a man is posed in the challenging circumstances of familily life, sex relationships, sport, cross gender roles and mafia.

Release Date2014-11-13

Characterse stesso

Vote Count11

Ladri di futuro

Everyday people, everyday stories. Normal, therefore special. They crave for a tomorrow what they haven't got today: the man or the woman of their dreams, a child all of their own, the hope of making it... The only thing they all have in common is the place where they live.

Release Date1992-04-17

DepartmentDirecting

JobFirst Assistant Director

Vote Count1

Napoli 24

The city of Naples is told through 24 short stories that emphasize its complexity, looks and characters.

Release Date2010-05-11

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count1

Sabbia

Academy Award winning director Paolo Sorrentino conveyed a seductive stillness of the volcanic islands of Lipari and Stromboli in Southern Italy in a short film for Giorgio Armani

Release Date2014-09-22

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

In the Mirror

The past is a locked door.

Release Date2011-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

L'Aquila 2009 - Five Directors in the Rubble

Release Date2009-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Fiat Croma

Short film selling Fiat Croma in different scenarios.

Release Date2005-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Nature: Consuelo

In a small rail-station, a young soldier and a girl are waiting for the train. They both share a very specific attraction to scars.

Release Date2005-01-01

DepartmentProduction

JobSupervising Producer

Giovani talenti italiani

Release Date2004-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

The Long Night

The long night of Manolo, hairdresser to the stars, on the Champs Élysées during his first experience with cocaine. He goes to discos and seances, sees widowed baronesses and pushers, and finally manages to set up his moment of intimacy with Ariel Bachini, famous film star, but…

Release Date2001-10-08

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Sue

A biopic about legendary Hollywood talent agent Sue Mengers. Mengers broke the glass ceiling as the female agent who crashed the Hollywood boys club of agenting with her brandishing an outsized personality to go with her client list which included Barbra Streisand, Cher, Brian De Palma, Faye Dunaway, etc.

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Grace

A love story set somewhere in Italy directed by Paolo Sorrentino.

Release Date2025-11-27

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

L'infinito

An autobiographical bittersweet drama centered on Contarello’s rapport with his daughter.

Release Date2025-05-15

DepartmentWriting

JobScreenplay

Faut Voir - L'hebdo cinéma

Release Date2023-09-22

CharacterSelf - Guest

Episode Count1

Lost Love

In Nazi-occupied France, the heart of a young nun is torn between God and Love.

Release Date2023-08-30

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Sei pezzi facili

Six plays staged for TV, under the artistic direction and direction of Paolo Sorrentino. A project dedicated to the genius of Mattia Torre, played by actors-friends, companions of many adventures in cinema, theater and fiction.

Release Date2022-11-12

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count6

Tutte le storie di Piera

Release Date2014-06-26

I nostri trent'anni - Generazioni a confronto

Various generations of filmmakers talk about what cinema means for them.

Release Date2004-01-01

CharacterSelf

The Spring of 2002 - Italy Protests, Italy Stops

Release Date2002-05-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Man Who Check the Meter

The portly meter reader Crecenzio is first seen blowing up a building. The reasons for this drastic, desperate act provide the basis for the story, which is told in flashback.

Release Date1995-09-01

DepartmentProduction

JobAssistant Unit Manager

Drogheria

Release Date1995-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobFirst Assistant Director

Sventramento

Release Date1995-01-01

DepartmentCamera

JobDirector of Photography

Mob Girl

The film follows Arlyne Brickman, who grows up among racketeers on the Lower East Side of New York City where she’s drawn to the glamorous and flashy lifestyle of New York mobsters. Soon after, she begins dating “wiseguys” and running errands for them, before getting in on the action herself — eventually becoming a police informant and a major witness in the government’s case against the Colombo crime family.

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Ferrari

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Episode Count1