Abel Ferrara has always been known for creating characters and stories that delve into extreme human behaviour, but his last couple of films have concerned events that he did not have to dream up. This summer, the filmmaker unveiled "Welcome To New York," the fictionalized tale of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and now, just a couple of months later, Ferrara is in Venice where he’s premiering "Pasolini," a feature about controversial, slain filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. And a pretty great first trailer for the film has arrived.
Vacillating between English, Italian and French, this looks to be a respectful and quite beautiful look at the director who brought "Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom" and "The Gospel According To St. Matthew" to cinemas. The movie will focus on the events surrounding Pasolini’s murder: while a male prostitute initially confessed to the crime, he later said the act was coerced via threats to his family, and there are several theories about what really happened to the director. But this trailer is less salacious than it is a portrait of a man of deep artistic and intellectual depth, in what looks like a potentially great turn by Willem Dafoe.
"Pasolini" will also screen at TIFF, but no U.S. distributors just yet. Watch below.
