One day, one life. On the night of 2 November 1975, the great Italian writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini is murdered in Rome. Pasolini is the symbol of an art that’s fighting relentlessly against power. His writings are scandalous, his films are persecuted by the censors, many people love him and many hate him. On the day of his death, Pasolini spends his last hours with his mother and later on, with his friends, before finally going out into the night in his Alfa Romeo in search of adventure in the Eternal City. At dawn, Pasolini is found dead on a beach in Ostia on the outskirts of the city. In a film dreamlike and visionary, a blend of reality and imagination, Abel Ferrara reconstructs the last day in the life of this great poet with frequent collaborator Willem Dafoe as Pier Paolo Pasolini.
»We’re coming from a point of a lot of respect. We dig the guy’s work, we dig everything about him. He’s essential viewing. His death, in 1975, was also kind of a very outrageous moment, all the bullshit surrounding the killing. When it comes down to it, we were probably gearing up to make this movie from the moment we heard he was dead.«
- Abel Ferrara
Abel Ferrara
Born in 1951 in the Bronx, Ferrara started making amateur films on Super 8 in his teens before making his debut with violent exploitation films such as Driller Killer and Ms.45. Good reviews for the latter helped create his cult reputation, leading to larger budgets, studio funding and 'name' actors, such as Christopher Walken, Harvey Keitel and, lately, Willem Dafoe.