The Oscar award Paolo Sorrentino is the artistic director in the new issue of Vanity Fair, on newsstands from May 20. In the hands of the director, the newspaper becomes a screenplay, a film that writes a stellar cast of actors, artists and personalities as writers. The project is inspired by La Grande Bellezza, the director's masterpiece awarded by the Academy Award in 2014, and is developed following an innovative multimedia operation, halfway between cinema and publishing.

First of all the cover, a crowd of pink flamingos photographed at night on the Spanish Steps by Alex Majoli with Paolo Sorrentino: an iconic and surreal vision that announces the "Phase 4", dreamlike but programmatic moment to think about the future after the lockdown and the first attempts to restart. Everyone is called to imagine their own Phase 4. For Sorrentino, this phase coincides with the myth of the Great Italian Beauty, treasure and opportunity, an ocean of excellence to look at and from which to draw any hypothesis of rebirth. For readers who watch it, it is a call to commitment and imagination: everyone can send their vision of the future using the hashtag # phase4 and describing their dream for tomorrow with a photograph.

The contents of the issue will be enriched by some videos documenting the director's long work, all shot in the eternal city during the lockdown. For this special issue, the city of Rome has exclusively opened some of its major cultural institutions for reportage and artistic performances organized by Vanity Fair together with Paolo Sorrentino, documented in the issue and in the videos. Among these, the Borghese Gallery and the Opera House.

Great personalities of the international star system contributing to the number, who tell personal experiences, suggestions or memories related to Italian beauty: Sharon Stone, Jennifer Lawrence, Willem Dafoe, Christoph Waltz, Jude Law, Wes Anderson, Jane Fonda, John Malkovich, Rachel Weisz is Woody Harrelson.

Italian fashion is also the protagonist: the designer Alessandro Michele participates in the operation by dialoguing with Achille Lauro on the role of beauty in today's culture.

For contemporary art, however, Marina Abramović he created an exclusive work by answering a question from the director.

Isabella RosselliniFinally, it adds to the stellar cast of the issue by telling the parable of one's beauty: from the memories of parents Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini to success as an icon in the world of beauty and cinema, up to the new commitment as an activist, popularizer and emblem of a new inclusive and feminist aesthetic.