Cult Italian American director Abel Ferrara is making a film inspired by women's jails in Naples using a technique similar to that of Oscar-winning US filmmaker Michael Moore.
Ferrara, 56, is best-known for hard-hitting films like Bad Lieutenant (1992) and Mary (2005), his second film shot in Italy and winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes that year.
In the documentary-style film, entitled Napoli, Napoli, Napoli, Ferrara said he would be using the freewheeling interview-based technique used by Moore in hits like Fahrenheit 9/11, Bowling for Columbine and Sicko.
"I've always been a great fan of Michael's work and, like him, I don't stop at interviews because I think you also need to create things in order to tell such sensitive stories," Ferrara said.
"We've already interviewed a lot of girls who live in jail and now we're writing stories based on the interviews".
"First and foremost, Napoli, Napoli, Napoli wants to talk about real-life stories and capture the real nature of the city".
Ferrara said he and his writers had lived in Naples's gritty Spanish Quarter for a few months and it reminded him a lot of the nearby city of Sarno where his family emigrated from.
"Naples is a big paradox because on the one hand it makes you feel really frustrated but on the other it gives you the energy to create," he said.
Ferrara already has another Naples-based film in pre-production, Pericles the Black, based on pulp novelist Giovanni Ferrandino's 1994 book of the same name and starring teen idol Riccardo Scamarcio.
The Bari-born Scamarcio, 27, who had a bit part in Ferrara's last film Go Go Tales, was "the right actor to capture the spirit of the city, even though he isn't Neapolitan," Ferrara said.
