«A film about love. The not only immediate love that concerns history, but also love in a broader sense for wife for daughter and also for institutions, for law and also love on a way of doing politics which is unfortunately more and more impact that was linked to the exercise of doubt and responsibility “. So today at Lido Paolo Sorrentino speaks with the press of “La Grazia”, opening films and in competition for Italy of this 82/but edition of the Venice International Film Festival that this morning, at the press screening, has received many applause.
On stage, in the film in the room from 15 January 2026 with Piperfilm, Mariano De Santis (Toni Servillo) imaginary President of the widowed, Catholic republic who lives at the Quirinale with his daughter, Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti) jurist like him. Inevitably we think of the current President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella. The president of Sorrentino is now at the end of the mandate and must decide on two delicate requests for grace, both linked to euthanasia.
Inside his heart, however, there is always the great love for his wife who disappeared eight years earlier to whom he binds a further doubt that does not give him peace. And still on the doubt the Oscar -winning director says: «The exercise of doubt is one of the qualities that are not very popular in politics. The degeneration of doubt in the First Republic was called immobility, but on issues such as granting a grace to a murderer or sign a law on euthanasia, the exercise of doubt should be a nonsense sine qua non. Today – said Sorrentino – there is too often men of power who exercise certainties. Except that once those certainties were supported by ideologies while today they are mostly bizarre ».
The inspiration comes instead from the Kieslowski decalogue and from “a food for the news, that is, the fact that the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella had precisely granted grace to man who had killed his alzheimer’s sick wife. The fact that a President of the Republic had this attitude towards life and a whole series of values that politics should always embody has really struck me. Because politics – he added – should always attend doubt ».
While on euthanasia, one of the central themes of the film in terms of President De Santis, a correct and believer man, is asked to sign a law that finally the regulations in our country, underlines Sorrentino: “The narrative hook, euthanasia, is certainly a moral dilemma and this theme acutes this dilemma. It is a topic in which the choice is really difficult, nuanced. A choice not only between good and evil and it must be said that, as a spectator, I have always detested the films that want to establish where one and the other is ».
Servillo in the seventh film with Paolo Sorrentino is keen to say that he was not inspired by any of the presidents of the past or present, but what has impressed him most in this new experience with Sorrentino was “his great ability to relaunch, to do something totally different from what preceded him”. While Anna Ferzetti speaks: “Of a beautiful journey made together. Of course – he added – he helped me the very particular relationship that I had with my father and who also influenced the choices of my profession. And this also made my things come out that I did not expect”.