‘Il disagio di stare al mondo’: Coming of Age, Masculinity, and Maradona in Paolo Sorrentino’s È stata la mano di Dio

Abstract

ABSTRACT With È stata la mano di Dio (2021), Paolo Sorrentino returned to filming in Naples, his hometown, 20 years after his first movie. Going back home is a moment of rupture in his production. ‘È stata la mano di Dio represents for the first time in my career an intimate and personal film’, Sorrentino explains. In this article I argue that the movie offers a self-reflexive reading of his origins as a director celebrating the primacy of Diego Armando Maradona’s influence on his work. Focusing on the protagonist Fabietto, Sorrentino’s cinematic alter ego, I examine the entanglements of his coming of age as a young man and the spectacle of Maradona’s transnational heroism, which inspires Fabietto’s decision to become a director. As a model of creativity and perseverance, Maradona illuminates the cinematic dialogue that Sorrentino establishes with his Neapolitan mentor Antonio Capuano and the Italian cinematic tradition embodied by Federico Fellini.