Top Indian director Anubhav Sinha will shoot his next film, Chase, in Rome and it will feature two European stars, the Bollywood icon said on Wednesday.
Speaking to ANSA in Cannes, the director said the movie will be set in Rome and the surrounding Lazio region.
Chase will be an action heist movie, Sinha said.
It will revolve around a man who wakes up with amnesia in a strange city and discovers he has apparently been involved in a bank robbery.
Both the criminal gang and the cops claim he was working for them and want to know where he has hidden the money.
Sinha, who has been dubbed "the Indian Luc Besson", received rave reviews for the action sequences and cinematography of his 2005 film, Dus.
The director told ANSA that he wants to cast Indian newcomers for this new picture, while also looking for two well-known European stars.
"This is a world friendly film, a mainstream film which I want to break beyond the borders of Bollywood, especially into Europe".
Chase will be produced by the Indian production company Adlabs and be shot in the Lazio region for eight weeks from August.
Sinha said he will be using a mainly Italian crew for the filming.
The reasons why he was attracted to Italy, he said, were "the tax breaks, the facilities offered and the country's pool of incredible filmmaking talent".
For the production he is working closely with the economic development organisation FILAS in Lazio as well as the Italian ministry of culture.
Sinha, whose new film Cash is coming out in July, said he was also busy with the production company Seven Entertainment on another project.
He wants to bring Nobel Prize-winning playwright Dario Fo's best-known play "Accidental Death of an Anarchist" to the big screen for the first time.
Sinha said he grew up "in the violence-ridden heartland of India and was surprised to find an Italian story which rang so familiar and true".
"Violence and apathy is the same whether in Italy or India".
The film should be completed by the winter of 2008.
