3.5/5 stars

From one controversial filmmaker to another, Abel Ferrara’s reverent portrait of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s last day alive serves as both a fan’s impassioned eulogy and a speculative glimpse at what might have transpired.

The celebrated Italian director of such notorious works as Salò and The Canterbury Tales was so much more than a mere provocateur. A poet, painter, philosopher and homosexual, Pasolini was also a political archivist, who railed against Italy’s right wing government with his Marxist views. Brutally murdered in 1975, those responsible for Pasolini’s death have never been apprehended and motives ranging from hate crime to assassination continue to circle his death.