Netflix has released the official trailer for In the Hand of Dante, Julian Schnabel’s sprawling new drama based on Nick Tosches’ novel of the same name.
The film follows two parallel stories separated by centuries. In the modern timeline, author Nick Tosches, played by Oscar Isaac, is drawn into a dangerous mission to authenticate and steal a priceless manuscript believed to be Dante Alighieri’s original The Divine Comedy, written in the poet’s own hand. After the death of his daughter, Nick is pulled out of isolation by a mafia don, played by John Malkovich, and sent into a violent world of obsession, greed and art as commodity.
At the same time, the film moves back to the 14th century, following Dante himself as he struggles with the creation of his epic masterpiece. Isaac also plays Dante, giving the film a mirrored structure: one man chasing the divine through poetry, another chasing the physical object left behind by that genius centuries later.
That duality gives In the Hand of Dante a very unusual texture. It is part literary mystery, part crime thriller, part historical fever dream. The trailer suggests a film less interested in clean genre boundaries and more drawn to the collision between beauty and brutality — sacred art on one side, mafia violence on the other.
The cast is massive. Alongside Oscar Isaac and John Malkovich, the film features Gal Gadot, Gerard Butler, Jason Momoa, Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino, Sabrina Impacciatore, Louis Cancelmi, Franco Nero and Benjamin Clementine. Schnabel directs from a script he co-wrote with Louise Kugelberg, bringing the painterly, restless style expected from the filmmaker behind The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Before Night Falls.
For viewers drawn to ambitious, strange and visually charged films, In the Hand of Dante looks like one of Netflix’s more unusual releases of the year. It is not simply adapting a famous literary title; it is asking what happens when a sacred work becomes an object of power, money and violence.
In the Hand of Dante opens in select theaters on June 12, 2026, before launching on Netflix on June 24.
Video source: Netflix
