Think of the great filmmaker and actor partnerships: Kurosawa and Mifune; Truffaut and Leaud; Scorsese and De Niro… In Italy, we think of Fellini and Mastroiannni, and now, surely, Paolo Sorrentino and Toni Servillo. Of Sorrentino’s 10 features, Servillo has starred in seven, most famously the Academy Award–winning The Great Beauty.
In their latest collaboration, Servillo plays a fictional President of the Republic, Mariano De Santis — a Catholic widower and legal scholar approaching the end of his term and deliberating whether to issue two presidential pardons that touch on his private life in complicated ways. This is a serious ethical drama about power and moral dilemmas, the kind of thorny questions of conscience that seem to have gone out of fashion in today’s politics. Servillo and Sorrentino insist that integrity is not always a black and white issue, but a responsibility to reckon with.
Volpi Cup for Best Actor (Toni Servillo), Venice 2025
Supported by
Toni Servillo, Anna Ferzetti
Italy
2025
In Italian with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Credits & Director
Producer
Andrea Scrosati, Annamaria Morelli, Paolo Sorrentino
Screenwriter
Paolo Sorrentino
Cinematography
Daria D’Antonio
Editor
Cristiano Travaglioli
Production Design
Ludovica Ferrario
Paolo Sorrentino
Filmography: The Great Beauty (2013); Rio, I love You (2014); Youth (2015); Loro (2018); The Hand of God (2021); Parthenope (2024)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Magnolia
This deeply personal 1999 California opus is ripe for rediscovery. Mapping the emotional traumas of half-a-dozen major characters as they crisscross the San Fernando Valley in search of either recognition or reconciliation, it's PTA's riskiest gamble.
But I'm a Cheerleader
Megan (Natasha Lyonne) is the perfect All-American Girl, or so she thinks. That is until she’s shipped off to conversion therapy. This pitch black comedy is wrapped in a saccharine bow, featuring the icon herself, RuPaul, as a conversion counsellor.
Franz
Veteran Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland takes the bull by the horns to craft a Kafka biopic that's Kafkaesque and then some, artfully layering scenes from Kafka's life and works along with ironic present-day footage for a truly surreal counterpoint.