‘The Hand of God’ Will Make You Fall in Love With Naples, Italy

Before you watch The Hand of God on Netflix, you should make sure your bank account can accommodate a trip to Italy in the near future. Because it’s impossible to come away from Paolo Sorrentino’s love letter to his hometown without itching to book a plane ticket to Naples, Italy ASAP.

Based on Sorrentino’s own childhood, The Hand of God centers on a teenage boy named Fabietto (Filippo Scotti) who lives with his family in Naples in the 1980s. It’s not a perfect childhood, but it’s more or less happy. Though they have their problems, Fabietto’s parents are loving, with each other and with their children. The family’s large weekly dinners with the relatives is always a raucous affair, full of drama and shouting and hurt feelings, but also an abundance of laughter. And the whole city is buzzing over Diego Maradona, a top-rated soccer player who returns to play for his home Napoli team.

Nothing gold can stay, of course, and a tragedy strikes Fabietto’s family that will change the course of his life. But amid his suffering, Fabietto eventually finds comfort in the beauty of his city. While it takes Fabietto a while to get there, the audience is privy to Naples’ splendor throughout, thanks to Sorrentino and cinematographer Daria D’Antonio’s reverent documentation of the seaside town.

Where was The Hand of God filmed?

The Hand of God was filmed on location in Naples, Italy. In fact, not only did Sorrentino film in his hometown, he went so far as to film at some of the exact locations he hung out as a teen, including the building of his childhood home.

In an interview for The Hand of God production notes, Sorrentino said, “I went looking for the places where I grew up. The set for the Schisa family home is in the same building I lived in, but on the floor above our actual apartment. It might not be the most cinematic, but it is very real.”

From the opening shot of the film, Sorrentino invites you to fall in love with his city. The camera sweeps over the coast, the buildings bathed in golden sunlight; the water, a deep sparkling blue. That said, there was a teensy bit of movie magic trickery at play here—don’t expect the coastline to be quite so picture perfect if and when you book your own Naples trip, because according to production designer Carmine Guarino, that shot was digitally enhanced to keep viewers in the 1980s state of mind.

“We started by reconstructing an authentic speedboat of the kind cigarette smugglers used to use,” Guarino said in an interview for the film’s production notes. “But as the speedboat travels towards the center of Naples, we touched up almost everything you can see, erasing the modern ships and contemporary elements such as antennas, satellite dishes, and the modern parts of the city.” A modern building was also edited out of the background of the scene where Fabietto is talking to his father looking out on a plaza of two young people kissing.

But give or take a few contemporary landmarks, Sorrentino gets his point across just fine: Naples is absolutely gorgeous. There’s just something magical about the yellow sunshine, the vibrant oranges against the lush green leaves, and the dazzling persistent presence of the sea. And if you notice that those dynamic colors begin to fade as the movie progresses, that’s by design. As cinematographer Daria D’Antonio explained in the same interview, “Paolo and I talked about the first part of the film being colorful and then, as Fabietto’s happiness fades, the colors fade as well, only to come back to vivid life at the end.”

If you do take a Hand of God-inspired trip to the Napoli coast, it’s sure to be a journey filled with both colors and shadows, lightness and darkness, much like Fabietto. Here’s to hoping Sorrentino gets a cut from the Naples tourist board.

Watch The Hand of God on Netflix