Paolo Sorrentino

Paolo Sorrentino ( SORR-ən-TEE-noh, Italian: [ˈpaːolo sorrenˈtiːno]; born 31 May 1970) is an Italian film director, screenwriter, and writer. He is considered one of the most prominent filmmakers of Italian cinema working today. He is known for visually striking and complex dramas and has often been compared to Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. He has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award accepted for Best International Film, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, two Cannes Film Festival prizes, four Venice Film Festival Awards and four European Film Awards. In Italy he was honoured with eight David di Donatello and six Nastro d'Argento awards.

Sorrentino made his directorial film debut with the Italian comedy-drama One Man Up (2001), for which he received the Nastro d'Argento for Best New Director, followed by The Consequences of Love (2004), The Family Friend (2006), and This Must Be the Place (2011). The biographical drama Il Divo (2009) was awarded the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize. He received critical acclaim with the art drama The Great Beauty (2013), which won the Academy Award, the Golden Globe, and the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

His next films were Youth (2015), Loro (2018), and The Hand of God (2021), the latter of which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. He is also known for creating and directing the HBO drama series The Young Pope (2016) and The New Pope (2019). He has worked with songwriters Antonello Venditti, Paloma Faith, and Mark Kozelek, and has written three books.