German director Wim Wenders announced Friday that he will start shooting a film on life in Sicily's capital Palermo in September.
Wenders, 62, said he has not written the screenplay of Palermo Story yet, but promised the movie will steer clear of tales of the Sicilian Mafia.
"I don't have a screenplay yet, but I know that the worst enemies of culture are stereotypes," said the Cannes Golden Palm winner.
"One thing is certain, Palermo Story will not be inspired by any set models".
He insisted he was unconcerned about not having a script so near to the start of shooting because "screenplays usually stop me working instinctively".
The director said his intention is to capture the spirit of the city, as he did with the capital of Portugal in his 1994 film, Lisbon Story.
"I want this city to tell me its story," Wenders said at a press conference at the offices of the Palermo Provincial Government, which is helping to finance the movie.
"There will definitely be local people in the film, but there will also be a foreign actor who'll have a visitor's feel.
"I'll respect the place and let Palermo tell me its story, like I did with Lisbon Story. It will be a film about identity".
Wenders said the original idea came from a local marketing manager, Giovanni Callea, who approached him with a proposal for a film set in the city.
"I love cities on the sea," he said. "Palermo has changed a lot since I last came here, in 1968, but it remains a land of treasures and disasters".
According to leaks from insiders, the film will be about a middle-aged man from Berlin who comes to Palermo because he needs to make a clean break from his past. In the city he meets a young woman and a completely different way of life.
Wenders was born in Dusseldorf in August 1945, the son of a chief surgeon at a local Catholic hospital.
He went on to study medicine at university but dropped out after two terms. He then tried philosophy and later sociology before abandoning university studies altogether and focusing on art and, in particular, watercolour painting.
He moved to Paris in 1966 where he became hooked on films. Returning to Germany two years later, he entered film school and began working as a cinema critic.
After making several short films, he graduated from film school with his first feature-length movie, a black-and-white budget drama called Summer in the City (1970).
But it was his next film, The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty (1972) - a powerful piece about a goalkeeper who goes mad after being sent off the pitch and murders a cinema cashier - which began to stir interest.
In the meantime, he joined more than a dozen other German filmmakers in setting up a production and distribution cooperative which eventually became the nucleus of the 1970s New German Cinema movement.
Paris, Texas, made in 1984, established Wenders' cult status. The film, which Wenders wrote with acclaimed American playwright and actor Sam Shepard, won the top prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival.
Other successful Wenders films include Wings of Desire (1987), Buena Vista Social Club and The Million Dollar Hotel (2000).
Wenders has also published a number of books, including several featuring his photography, essays and reflections on film-making.
