'The Hand Of God' Trailer: 'The Young Pope' Creator Paolo Sorrentino Gets Personal In Naples

Get ready to be moved by The Hand of God...on Netflix.

You might know the name Paolo Sorrentino from HBO's The Young Pope and The New Pope, starring Jude Law and John Malkovich, respectively; two different men associated with the talented Mr. Tom Ripley and his movie travels in Italy. Before he jumped on the Home Box Office network, Sorrentino made a splash with his 2013 Italian film, The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza), which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Now, he's returning to his hometown of Naples, Italy, for The Hand of God.

Despite the religious-sounding movie and TV titles that pepper his filmography, Sorrentino himself doesn't profess to be religious. In an interview with SBS, he characterized himself as a "non-believer." However, he wants to make a believer out of you — on Netflix — with The Hand of God.

Check out the teaser below. It's sure to have you doing a chef's kiss and building your Italian vocab, saying, "Bellisima."

Speaking for all of us in the 2020s, the teaser for The Hand of God opens with the words, "I don't like reality anymore. Reality is lousy." These words come from a young man who would prefer to put on his headphones than live in the world.

He stares up at the big screen in a movie theater. Gosh, dammit, a movie theater. You remember those.

On the streets outside, the young man is confronted with the sight of a film crew doing some location shooting. There's some whistling, moped-riding, flag-waving, cigarette-smoking (don't recommend that), and hula-hooping.

"So, do you have something to say?" a man asks in impassioned Italian. "Do you have a story to tell?"

"Yes!" the young man replies.

"Then spit it out!"

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this is a very personal, perhaps semiautobiographical project for Sorrentino, the Naples native turned international filmmaker. Here's the official synopsis for The Hand of God:

From Academy Award-winning writer and director Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty), comes the story of a young man's heartbreak and liberation in 1980s Naples, Italy. The Hand of God follows Fabietto Schisa, an awkward Italian teen whose life and vibrant, eccentric family are suddenly upended — first by the electrifying arrival of soccer legend Diego Maradona and then by a shocking accident from which Maradona inadvertently saves Fabietto, setting his future in motion. Sorrentino returns to his hometown to tell his most personal story, a tale of fate and family, sports and cinema, love and loss.

The Hand of God is in select theaters on December 3, 2021, and on Netflix on December 15, 2021. Keep this one on your radar.