Bestselling Italian writer-turned-director Donato Carrisi (“The Girl in the Fog,” “Into the Labyrinth”) has started shooting near Lake Como on his third feature film “I Am the Abyss.”
Vision Distribution is launching international sales at the online American Film Market on the pic, which based on his new thriller by the same title.
Carrisi, who has penned 11 international bestsellers and sold over 3 million copies of his books worldwide, shot to the top of Italy’s book charts earlier this year shortly after “I Am the Abyss” was published in Italy in November 2020.
The psychological chiller involving a serial killer set in an atmospheric lakeside setting, has been translated in Germany, France and other countries and will be out in the U.K. this month.
Carrisi in a statement called his latest work “a thriller involving deep feelings in which the twists and the suspense are built around the characters’ narrative arcs.
“There is a visible story, but there is also a submerged one that flows silently and then suddenly emerges,” he added. “And that is the one that strikes the viewer when they least expect it in that little spot in our heart where we keep empathy.”
Cast on “I Am the Abyss” is still being kept under wraps, even though cameras are rolling.
The film is being co-produced by Italy’s Palomar, the Italian production outfit that’s part of France’s Mediawan Group, and Vision Distribution, which is headed by veteran Italian sales agent Catia Rossi. Palomar has produced some of Italy’s top recent films and series, including Oscar-nominated Sophia Loren-starrer “The Life Ahead” and the “Inspector Montalbano” skein.
Vision Distribution is the sales arm of a unique content alliance formed in 2016 by pay TV operator Sky Italia and five prominent Italian production companies — ITV-owned Cattleya, Fremantle’s Wildside, Lucisano Media Group, Indiana Production and Palomar— that inked a deal to jointly release their films domestically.
Carrisi’s previous films “The Girl in the Fog,” which starred Toni Servillo and Jean Reno, and “Into the Labyrinth,” with Servillo and Dustin Hoffman, travelled widely.