Film
Il Divo
Paolo Sorrentino's portrait of Giulio Andreotti, Italy's most durable and enigmatic postwar politician, as he faces accusations of Mafia complicity in his final days of power. It's a film about the nature of power itself—how it's wielded, hidden, preserved—told through cold, precise frames and Toni Servillo's mesmerizing performance. For those drawn to political intrigue and moral ambiguity.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you enjoy political dramas that treat power as a stylised, darkly comic performance, and you don't mind a director who turns every corridor, card game and quiet glance into a flourish.
Skip it if you want the history laid out plainly, since it assumes you already know the Italian figures and moves quickly, with heavy stylisation and sudden jolts of music.
What it asks of you: Just under two hours of dense material and quick cuts; it wants full attention and keeps its tone shifting between grim, absurd and operatic.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Spotlight2015
Another meticulous investigation into institutional corruption, where the slow accumulation of evidence and testimony builds to something devastating. The methodical pacing mirrors how truth emerges from bureaucracy.
But It's American and morally simpler than Il Divo; there's less ambiguity about who the villains are.
The Third Man1949
Carol Reed's Vienna of shadows and moral compromise, where nobody's hands are clean and charm masks rot. It shares Il Divo's fascination with powerful men operating in the grey zones of power.
But The film is seventy years old and shot in black and white; some find the pace deliberate to the point of testing.
A Prophet2009
Jacques Audiard's study of a young man learning the machinery of power—corruption, loyalty, survival—from inside a prison. The same intelligence about how systems work and how to navigate them.
But It's bleaker and more violent; Il Divo is colder and more cerebral about the same dark machinery.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Il Divo
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Gomorra: La Serie2014
Both examine the same Naples power structure from opposite angles—Gomorrah from the street up, Il Divo from the political summit down. Together they show how completely organized crime and legitimate government are braided together in Southern Italy.
Matteo Garrone's brutal series about Naples and Camorra, the same criminal underworld that fingers Andreotti in Il Divo. Where the film is cool and distant, Gomorrah is immersive and violent—you live in the system rather than observe it.
But It's Italian crime television with subtitles, graphically brutal, and the narrative is fragmented across multiple characters. It demands more patience than Il Divo's focused frame.
More like this (8)
The Godfather Part III1990
Michael Corleone attempting to legitimize his power and escape his past; a meditation on whether that's possible. It shares Il Divo's obsession with power, age, and the men who can't relinquish either.
But It's operatic where Il Divo is austere. Coppola is more sentimental about his characters.
All the President's Men1976
The quintessential political corruption narrative: patient, procedural, about the slow work of exposing what powerful men want hidden. The DNA is similar, even if the style is more American thriller.
But It's a conventional narrative of good journalists versus bad men; Il Divo refuses that moral simplicity.
The Counselor2013
Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy on a man of law drawn into criminal machinery, watching his power dissolve. Dark, philosophical, about how systems swallow the people who try to use them.
But It's visually baroque and can feel overwrought; Il Divo's restraint is a different thing entirely.
Blade Runner 20492017
Sorrentino's visual precision and philosophical patience applied to a different genre entirely. Glacial, composed, asking what power costs and whether answers matter.
But It's science fiction; if you want political realism Il Divo delivers that more directly.
A Serious Man2009
The Coens examine institutional power (in this case, Jewish law and tradition) and a man confronting his own powerlessness. Darkly funny in ways Il Divo isn't, but with similar moral ambiguity.
But It's a comedy-tragedy hybrid; Il Divo's tone is far more austere and less likely to make you laugh.
The Master2012
Paul Thomas Anderson's study of charisma, control, and two men locked in a power struggle. Unease radiates from every frame; it shares Il Divo's interest in what happens when powerful men collide.
But It's dense, difficult, and more interested in psychology than plot. Some find it glacial rather than gripping.
The Death of Stalin2017
Both track the final days of a powerful leader as subordinates position themselves and truth becomes whatever serves power. One is cold observation; one is grotesque farce. Both are right.
Armando Iannucci's satire about the power vacuum after Stalin's death: men circling, maneuvering, each trying to seem less guilty than the others. It's black comedy about the same machinery Il Divo examines in tragedy—how power transfers, how it's defended, how little separates triumph from ruin.
But It's British satire in black and white, funny and deliberately absurdist. If you want sober political drama rather than savage comedy about politics, this will feel like tonal whiplash.
The Conversation1974
Both are about intelligent men who have chosen to live inside systems of power and surveillance, and what happens when those systems turn to examine them instead. Both suggest that you cannot watch power from inside it—you are always part of the machinery.
Coppola's paranoid masterpiece about a surveillance expert watching everything except his own complicity in what he's observing. Like Andreotti in Il Divo, the protagonist is implicated by his own sophistication—he sees the machinery and uses it until it turns on him.
But It's a 1970s American thriller, slower and more formally experimental than modern cinema expects. The obsession is interior and psychological rather than political.
People
Cast
Toni ServilloGiulio Andreotti
Anna BonaiutoLivia Danese
Giulio BosettiEugenio Scalfari
Flavio BucciFranco Evangelisti
Carlo BuccirossoPaolo Cirino Pomicino
Giorgio ColangeliSalvo Lima
Alberto CraccoDon Mario Canciani
Piera Degli EspostiSignora Enea
Lorenzo GioielliMino Pecorelli
Paolo GraziosiAldo Moro
Gianfelice ImparatoVincenzo Scotti
Massimo PopolizioVittorio Sbardella
Directing
- Davide BertoniAssistant Director
- Paolo SorrentinoDirector
Writing
- Paolo SorrentinoScreenplay
Production
- Annamaria SambuccoCasting
- Fabio ConversiCo-Producer
- Maurizio CoppolecchiaCo-Producer
- Andrea OcchipintiProducer
- Francesca CimaProducer
- Nicola GiulianoProducer
- Gennaro FormisanoProduction Manager
- Viola PrestieriProduction Manager
- Lara LucchettaResearcher
Recommended by
Gomorrah, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Salvatore Giuliano, Respiro, The Caiman, One Breath, Man on the Roof