ODE TO JOY: EUROPEAN CINEFEST SAN FRANCISCO
Saturday, November 21 | 5:30 PM
Delancey St Screening Room
600 The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94107
Italy, 2025, 131 min
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Cast: Toni Servillo, Anna Ferzetti, Orlando Cinque, Massimo Venturiello, Milvia Marigliano, Giuseppe Gaiani, Linda Messerklinger, Vasco Mirandola
In Italian with English subtitles
Free event open to the public. Registration required.
SYNOPSIS
Mariano De Santis is the President of the Italian Republic. No connection to any real-life presidents; he is entirely a product of the author’s imagination. A widower and a Catholic, he has a daughter, Dorotea, a legal scholar like himself. As his term draws to a close, amid uneventful days, two final duties arise: deciding on two delicate petitions for a presidential pardon. True moral dilemmas, which become tangled with his private life, in ways that seem impossible to unravel. Driven by doubt, he will have to decide. And, with a deep sense of responsibility, that is exactly what this remarkable Italian President will do.
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
La Grazia is a film about love. That inexhaustible engine that gives rise to doubt, jealousy, tenderness, emotion, an understanding of the things of life and responsibility. Love and all its intricate offshoots are seen and experienced through the eyes of Mariano De Santis, an entirely fictional but credible President of the Italian Republic. Mariano De Santis loves his late wife, he loves his daughter and son and the generational gap that separates them from him. He loves criminal law, which he has studied all his life.
Behind his serious and austere demeanour, Mariano De Santis is a man of love.
La Grazia is a film about doubt. And the need to embrace it. This is especially true in politics and even more so today, in a world where politicians too often present a blunt package of certainties that only cause damage, friction and resentment. This undermines collective well-being, dialogue and general harmony. Mariano De Santis is a man driven by doubt.
La Grazia is a film about a moral dilemma. Whether or not to grant clemency to two individuals who have committed murder, though perhaps in circumstances that might be forgiven. Whether or not, as a Catholic, to sign a problematic bill on euthanasia.
As a young man I was profoundly struck by Kieślowski’s Decalogue. A masterpiece entirely focused on moral dilemmas; the plot of all plots, the only truly compelling narrative. More than any thriller. I don’t believe I have even remotely approached the genius of Kieślowski, nor the depth with which he tackled moral themes, but I felt compelled to try anyway, in a historical moment when ethics sometimes seems optional, elusive, opaque, or all too often invoked only for instrumental reasons.
Ethics is a serious matter. It holds up the world.
And Mariano De Santis is a serious man.
The festival is organized by the EU Office in San Francisco in collaboration with European Consulates and Cultural Institutes to celebrate the joy of storytelling and Europe’s diversity on the big screen: a three-day cinematic journey through Europe’s cultures, languages, and emotions.