Paolo Sorrentino's new film La Grazia will open the 82nd Venice Film Festival on August 27, organisers said Friday.
    The film stars Toni Servillo in his seventh collaboration with Sorrentino, who won the 2014 best foreign picture Oscar with The Great Beauty.
    "I am very happy that the 82nd Venice Film Festival is opening with the new, highly anticipated film by Paolo Sorrentino", said festival director Alberto Barbera.
    "I like to recall that one of the most important and internationally appreciated Italian authors made his debut at the Venice Biennale in 2001 with his first film, One Man Up, in my first years as artistic director.
    "A bond with the Festival consolidated over the years with the out-of-competition presentation of the first episodes of the series The Young Pope (first and second season) and, above all, with It Was the Hand of God which, in 2021, won the Silver Lion - Grand Jury Prize.
    "Paolo Sorrentino's return to competition takes place with a film destined to leave its mark for its great originality and strong harmony with the present, which the audience of the Festival will have the pleasure of discovering on the opening night".

The 82nd Venice Film Festival will be held from 27 August to 6 September 2025.
    La Grazia (Grace), which also stars Massimo Venturiello and Anna Ferzetti, is set largely in Piedmont and its capital Turin including the world-famous Egyptian Museum, but scenes have also been filmed at the Spanish Steps in Rome.

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