Part of SFFILM Festival
Loro
Description
Director Paolo Sorrentino and actor Toni Servillo (Il Divo, 2008; The Great Beauty, 2013) continue their rich cinematic collaboration and imaginative evisceration of current Italian politics and society with this fictionalized portrait of Silvio Berlusconi. Set in the late 2000s, the film follows an ambitious hustler with political aspirations from his provincial city to Sardinia where he hopes to catch the attention of the media mogul and former Prime Minister. Servillo is mesmerizing as a man shaded with self-loathing but determined to maintain both his marriage and political power.
A richly inventive, ferocious feast of satire and vulgarity. . . All this was poignantly detailed in the poetic The Great Beauty, but Sorrentino’s current film is a far angrier, more contemptuous vision. It’s the dark side of Fellini, one might say, the director’s usual source of inspiration. Here, in Sorrentino’s sweeping vision of hell, Italian society is permeated by trashy vulgarity and endemic corruption.” – Deborah Young, The Hollywood Reporter
Co-presented by
Instituto di Cultura/Italian Cultural Institute
Paulo Sorrentino began his long association with Loro (2018) star Toni Servillo with his directing debut One Man Up (2001). Among their other collaborations are Il Divo (2008), winner of the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and The Great Beauty (2013), recipient of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Among the Naples-born filmmaker’s other works are This Must Be the Place (2011), Youth (2015), and the TV series The Young Pope (2016) and The New Pope (2019). Of Loro and its subject, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Sorrentino says, “The objective is not to glorify, at least not for me, nor is it to point a finger and decide which men are good and which men are bad. That’s the wrong approach for art in general, whether it’s a film or novel. This film gives us an opportunity to get an in-depth understanding of all sides of this man.”
Film Details
Year 2018
Language Italian
Runtime 150
Country Italy
Director Paolo Sorrentino
Producer Nicola Giuliano, Francesca Cima, Carlotta Calori, Viola Prestieri
Writer Paolo Sorrentino, Umberto Contarello
Editor Cristiano Travaglioli
Cinematographer Luca Bigazzi
Music Lele Marchitelli
Cast Toni Servillo, Elena Sofia Ricci, Riccardo Scamarcio
Print Source IFC FilmsDanielle.Freiberg@ifcfilms.comifcfilms.com
