The first pictures of Willem Dafoe as famed gay director Pier Paolo Pasolini have emerged, which you can see above and below.

Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini certainly lived an interesting life, growing up in Mussolini’s Italy (his father actually saved the dictator’s life), becoming a communist before being thrown out after being charged with committing lewd acts in a public place, which was the first of several legal battles, partly based on the Italian government’s initial antipathy to him.

Those lewd act charges also meant that he was out as gay whether he wanted to be or not.

He then became a renowned but controversial director, helming films such as The Decameron, The Gospel According to Matthew and Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom. Tragically in 1975 he was murdered. A 17-year-old rent boy was convicted of the crime, but in recent years there has been speculation he was killed as part of an extortion plot or due to anger at his communist leanings.

The film, Pasolini, follows the directors final days and the confusion over his death. It’s directed by Bad Lieutenant’s Abel Ferrara, who told Variety,  “Seeing Salo was a great moment for me. Pasolini was not just a great film director, he was a philosopher, a poet, a journalist who wrote editorials, a communist but a Catholic who opposed birth control, a radical, a free-thinker on every level. There are not a lot of people about whom you could say that their death changed the course of history, but Pasolini was one.”