The new film by Paolo Sorrentino will be a tribute to Maradona?

Thank you to all my sources of inspiration: Federico Fellini, Talking Heads, Martin Scorsese and Diego Armando Maradona.

Six years have passed since the Academy Awards® speech in which Paolo Sorrentino, who won the Oscar® for Best Foreign Film with The Great Beauty, thanked Diego Armando Maradona for always having been one of his greatest sources of inspiration. Six years from that moment Sorrentino, who is today among the most famous Italian directors in the world, has signed an agreement with Netflix for the production of his next film: È stata la mano di Dio. The announcement came almost by surprise and at the moment there is no news on the plot. The only certainty is that shooting will start shortly in Naples. According to the title, however, it is legitimate to think that the film can be dedicated (or at least a tribute) to Maradona: "La mano de Diòs", in fact, is the nickname that the press gave to Maradona after the famous goal with the hand scored in the match against England at the 1986 World Cup, lately won by the Argentine national team. 

"I am thrilled at the idea of returning to shoot in Naples, exactly twenty years after my first film," said Sorrentino; "È stata la mano di Dio is, for the first time in my career, an intimate and personal film , a cheerful and painful training novel. I am happy to share this adventure with producer Lorenzo Mieli, his The Apartment and Netflix. The harmony with [...] Netflix, on the meaning of this film, was immediate and dazzling. They made me feel at home, an ideal condition, because this film, for me, means exactly this: going home."

If it is really dedicated to Maradona, Sorrentino's new film would make even richer the cinematographic tradition about him. Only in the past few years, Netflix released three more titles dedicated to the Pibe de Oro: Maradona in Mexico (2020), a 7-episode miniseries following Maradona's arrival in Culiacán to train the local Dorados team; Maradonapoli (2017), a film that focuses on his Neapolitan period; but above all Diego Maradona (2019), the documentary by Asif Kapadia awarded at the last edition of the Cannes Film Festival.