Sorrentino's Next Film to be Set in Rome; Could Feature Angelina Jolie

ROME – Paolo Sorrentino, who won two Cannes jury prizes in the last five years and whose last film, This Must Be the Place, was his first project set outside Italy, will return to Rome for his next project, which he says will feature Angelina Jolie in a small role.

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Sorrentino is the 42-year-old Neapolitan director behind Il Divo, the film that told the story of Italy’s polarizing political icon Giulio Andreotti, which won the Cannes jury prize in 2008. He followed with This Must Be the Place, which starred Sean Penn as an aging rocker out to avenge the man who revealed that his father had been a Nazi and won Cannes’ Ecumenical Jury prize in 2011.

Two earlier Sorrentino films, Amico di Famiglia (Family Friend) from 2006 and Le Conseguenze dell’amore (The Consequences of Love) from 2004 also screened in competition in Cannes.

Sorrentinto said his next film, La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty), will be set in Rome. The film, which he said will have a cameo role for Jolie, will star Toni Servillo, who will play a La Dolce Vita-style reporter. It is tentatively scheduled for release in 2013, though it is not clear whether it will be finished in time to become Sorrentino's fifth consecutive film to screen in competition in Cannes.  

The film will be Servillo’s third collaboration with Sorrentino: he played a small role in Le Conseguenze dell’amore and played the central role of Andreotti in Il Divo.