Italian screen beauty Maria Grazia Cucinotta says her native Sicily, for all its faults, is heaven on Earth.
The Messina-born actress, 38, said she had realised what a great place Sicily was on a recent return visit and decided to set her first film as producer there.
''It's no accident that I chose Sicily to shoot many scenes of the film. I left Sicily when I was a little girl to find paradise elsewhere only to realise, eventually, that this land is really heaven,'' she said on the Palermo shoot of L'Imbroglio del Lenzuolo (The Trick in the Sheet).
''Up till now Sicily has often 'worn' clothes that don't really suit it, which have not allowed it to be appreciated for what it is,'' said Cucinotta, who also acts in the film.
''Now it's time to change wardrobe and make everyone understand that Sicily is second to none.
''It's a queen among places and I, with great possessiveness and passion, will try to get everyone to see that through cinema''.
L'Imbroglio del Lenzuolo - whose title alludes to cinema's earliest days on the island, when films were projected onto white sheets - is set to wrap in the spring and scheduled for release in the autumn.
Cucinotta sprang to international prominence as the love interest of Massimo Troisi in the late Neapolitan actor-director's last movie The Postman, which gained five Oscar nominations in 1996.
She played a Bond girl in The World Is Not Enough and also made a guest appearance on the hit US TV series The Sopranos.
