In 1998 we made a documentary about Pasolini entitled Un viaggio in Italia, shot over the course of a long pilgrimage through Italy during the summer of that year. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the murder of Pasolini at an abandoned seaplane base in Ostia, we decided to reuse material shot for that film in an entirely different way. For Gli amici di Pier Paolo we chose the voices of seven of those who were closest to Pasolini, interviewed in that summer nearly 30 years ago. We envisaged the film as being a source of oral testimony, almost free of editing, without archive footage; we simply listen to the words of those interviews, of which we were only able to use a few fragments in our earlier documentary. They are the words of poet Attilio Bertolucci – in his final interview – director Bernardo Bertolucci, author Dacia Maraini, artists Fabio Mauri and Giuseppe Zigaina, actress Laura Betti and publisher Silvana Mauri.
Gli amici di Pier Paolo has the sole objective of sharing with spectators the words of his friends – many of whom are now longer with us – giving the audience the pure pleasure of listening and, above all else, an opportunity to reflect. It is not a documentary, and it was never intended as such: it is a “document about Pasolini”, the great poet, director, and unrivalled European intellectual.

Francesco Giuncolucci