Why Pier Paolo Pasolini will always be remembered for Salò

Abel Ferrara was once a director indelibly tied to America. Films such as King of New York (1990), Bad Lieutenant (1992) and The Funeral (1996) - arguably his best works in a long career - were very much about the souring of the American dream. But no more, he says. "I'm a world filmmaker. I'm a citizen of the world. I go where I'm free to make movies, and it's certainly not the United States. Forget it. I'm not going to waste my time with these people."

Instead, he's spent five of the past 10 years in Rome - ever since he headed there to make 2005's Mary. Most of his work is funded in Europe now, far from Hollywood. "The further I get from Los Angeles, the better it is," he says. Even 2014's Welcome to New York has a distinctly European flavour - despite its American setting. So perhaps it's no surprise that his latest film, Pasolini, sees him pay tribute to Italian cinematic maestro Pier Paolo Pasolini.

A poet, writer and intellectual, the Bologna-born Pasolini made his name with films such as The Gospel According to Matthew (1964) and The Decameron (1971). "He's a filmmaker I adore," says Ferrara, 63. "As a young filmmaker, you go through periods … With Italian cinema, your [Michelangelo] Antonioni period, your [Roberto] Rossellini period … but there was never a period [with Pasolini]. He was always there. So then you try to understand: 'Why him? Why? Why? Why?' And the film becomes the answer to that question."

As it goes, it was Pasolini's last film, 1975's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom - a shocking post-Mussolini spin on the Marquis de Sade's famous 18th century erotic novel - that cemented his reputation, albeit posthumously. For shortly after Pasolini finished Salò, he was murdered on a beach outside Rome in November 1975, crushed by the tyres of his own car. Debate still rages as to whether a young male prostitute was responsible, or if others were involved.

With the film dealing with the last days of his life, Pasolini is convincingly played by Ferrara's regular collaborator Willem Dafoe, in their fourth - and best - film together. "He was really prescient," Dafoe says of his character. "He really saw where society was going before it went there. What he was talking about is still relevant today … he lived through the Italian [economic] boom, and he saw what it was doing to people. I think in a very articulate way, he expressed the price that we pay as individuals, as people."