The Hand of God follows Fabietto Schisa, a shy seventeen-year-old living with his large family in Naples during the 1980s. He spends his days watching football, riding his Vespa, and trying to understand love, sex, and the adults around him. Diego Maradona’s arrival at Napoli gives the city a burst of pride and gives Fabietto a strange sense of protection. A sudden family tragedy kills his parents and forces him to face grief alone. The film moves from loud summer comedy to quiet sorrow before finding a hopeful path through cinema.
The story spends much of its first half on family jokes, arguments, infidelity, domestic abuse, and the boy’s growing attraction to women. The men often act selfishly or foolishly, while the women around Fabietto are strong, sharp, and central to his memories. The film also includes heavy sexual talk, full nudity, and an unsettling encounter between Fabietto and an older woman. After his parents die, a blunt filmmaker helps him see that pain can become a reason to make movies. Fabietto chooses to leave Naples and search for a life shaped by memory, loss, and imagination.
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Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for The Hand of God.
Woke representation / casting
Not present. The cast shows Italian people in a 1980s Naples story, with local actors playing a local family. The film does not make race, gender, sexuality, or diversity-first casting part of its message.
0%
Woke political dialogue
Not present. The dialogue has crude sex talk, family jokes, and angry insults. Its brief talk about Maradona as a political liberator is a historical football joke, not modern identity, DEI, or activist messaging.
0%
Identity-driven story themes
The story repeatedly gives Fabietto women who are more clear-sighted and emotionally important than the men around him. The movie shows his mother handling family life, his aunt’s pain shaping his memories, and an older neighbor guiding his sexual awakening. Male relatives often cheat, fight, act foolishly, or give crude lessons about manhood. This gender contrast is noticeable, but it stays inside a personal 1980s family story instead of becoming a modern activist message.
24%
Western institutional / cultural critique
The film shows Patrizia being hit by her jealous husband and treated as a sexual object by men around her. It also shows a father’s cheating and crude advice about sex. These scenes show harmful male behavior, but the story does not turn them into a broad modern attack on Western culture, family life, or Christianity.
14%
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant. The film is a semi-autobiographical original story, not a remake or franchise with established characters. Its changes to Sorrentino’s memories concern timing and story details, not race, gender, sexuality, or leadership roles.
0%
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Not present. No sustained anti-woke backlash was found. The separate X review found no anti-woke complaints, and wider discussions focused on sex, nudity, the way the film looks at women’s bodies, grief, and unusual style. Those complaints were not claims that the film pushed DEI or identity politics.
0%
Creator track record context
Paolo Sorrentino has a moderate record of political and institutional stories, but he is not known for a steady DEI or activist message. Lorenzo Mieli and Elena Recchia have worked on queer and identity-focused films. That past work raises the context score, while this movie itself is framed around Naples, grief, youth, football, and cinema. The title interviews do not present it as a diversity or social-justice project.
40%
Production
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