IL DIVO aka IL DIVO:LA SPETTACOLARE
VITA DI GIULIO ANDREOTTI aka
THE SPECTACULAR LIFE OF GIULIO ANDREOTTI

Year: 2008
USA: Music Box Films
UK: Artificial Eye
Cast: Toni Servillo, Anna Bonaiuto, Giulio Bosetti, Flavio Bucci, Carlo Buccirosso, Giorgio Colangeli, Alberto Cracco, Piera Degli Esposti, Lorenzo Gioielli, Paolo Graziosi, Gianfelice Imparato, Massimo Popolizio, Aldo Ralli, Giovanni Vettorazzo
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Country: Italy
Language: Italian (English subtitles)
USA: 110 mins
UK: 117 mins
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong violence
USA Release Date: 24 April 2009 (Limited Release)
UK Release Date: 20 March 2009 (Limited Release)
UK Distributor

Synopsis

From the director of THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE & THE FAMILY FRIEND, IL DIVO was the winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival 2008, Toni Servillo was winner of Best European Actor at the European Film Awards 2008 and also won Film On The Square at the London Film Festival 2008.

In Rome, at dawn, when everyone is sleeping, one man is awake. That man is Giulio Andreotti (Toni Servillo).

He's awake because he has to work, write books, move in fashionable circles and, last but not least, pray. Calm, crafty and inscrutable, Andreotti is synonym of power in Italy for over four decades. At the beginning of the Nineties, this impassive yet insinuating, ambiguous yet reassuring figure appears set to assume his seventh mandate as Prime Minister without arrogance and without humility.

Approaching seventy, Andreotti is a gerontocrat who, with all the attributes of God, is afraid of no one and does not know the meaning of awe, since he is accustomed to seeing it stamped on the faces of all his interlocutors. His satisfaction is muted, impalpable. For him, satisfaction is power, with which he has a symbiotic relationship. Power the way he likes it. Unwavering and immutable, from the outset. He emerges unscathed from everything: electoral battles, terrorist massacres, slanderous accusations. He is untouched by it all, unchanging.

Until the strongest counter power in Italy, the Mafia, declares war on him. Then things change. Perhaps even for the enigmatic, immortal Andreotti. But the question is: do they really change or only appear to? We can be sure of one thing: it is difficult to tarnish Andreotti, the man who knows the ways of the world better than any of us.