Giuseppe Ferrara is one of those directors of whom I am aware, rather than familiar. After beginning his career as a journalist and as a documentary filmmaker, he directed his first full length feature, Il sasso in bocca, in 1969. Since then, though, his releases, although often controversial, have been relatively infrequent. There was Faccia di spia (Face of a Spy, 75), with its use of horrific, mondo-style footage, the Lando Ventura vehicle Cento giorni a Palermo (84) and the award winning Il caso Moro (86). In more recent years, he’s made respected but hardly money-spinning films such as Giovane Falcone (93), Segreto di stato (95), I banchieri di Dio (The Bankers of God: The Calvi Affair, 2002) and Guido che sfidò le Brigate Rosse (2007), his latest film to date. Narcos, his 1992 film, made after a six year absence from cinema, initially looks as though it might be something a little atypical, primarily because it’s set in Columbia rather than Italy. Before long, though, it becomes apparent that he’s using the Columbian settings to put across a message about Italian society: it’s a place that’s similarly ridden by political corruption, under the control of powerful crime-lords and full of young men who are sucked into lives of criminality because, quite frankly, there isn’t much else in the way of opportunity for them.