From the makers of FantastiCozzi, a new documentary about the life and career of controversial Italian director Ruggero Deodato.

An opening title reads, “In 2017, three Brazillian filmmakers tried to interview Italian director Ruggero Deodato for a documentary. They disappeared without a trace. Two years later, their memory cards were found.” This is a series of interviews with Ruggero Deodato, creator of Cannibal Holocaust, the infamous grandaddy of found footage films.

Deodato talks of his childhood, when his father ordered him to study, but his mother advised him to have adventures. He started his film career working for such directors as Roberto Rossellini before directing in his own right, reviving the once-popular mondo cannibal film genre with Last Cannibal World (Ultimo Mondo Cannibale). On the success of that, he flew to Colombia to make his best-known film and progenitor of the found-footage horror genre, Cannibal Holocaust, which released in 1980 to horrified reviews.

But he says his movie is not horror. “Cannibal Holocaust is pure realism, Rossellini would have liked it.”

That movie would prove to be a huge thorn in the director’s side. He was arrested and accused of obscenity — and also the actual on-screen murder of his actors. Like The Blair Witch Project almost 20 years later, the actors of Cannibal Holocaust had been instructed to not work for a time after the film was released, to promote the idea that the footage was real. Of course, this only increased the mythic quality of the film, and it became an urban legend that persists to this day.

That said, the charge of animal cruelty stuck. He is derisive of this. People kill and eat animals, he says, so why should it be banned and censored to film it? He feels that it is very sad that modern people don’t know death directly.

No production companies would work with Deodato after that, at least for a while, and he made his living in advertising, if you can believe it!

But soon enough he was working again, and, he complains, always they said, “Make it like Cannibal Holocaust!” But he didn’t want to make another Cannibal Holocaust.

Which is not to say he ever shied away from violence and brutality. He also strayed from realism, producing a movie about a killer telephone (Dial Help) in 1988 and one about a killer washing machine (The Washing Machine) that he was very fond of in 1993.

“Let’s talk about  The Blair Witch Project,” he says. “Cannibal Holocaust was, let’s say, an incident, that brought me a lot of luck because it made me famous thanks to the two guys who made The Blair Witch Project. They were my salvation because they made a movie, a movie that mimicked mine, but that was very poorly done! Cannibal Holocaust is a film that was forgotten in Italy. No one remembered it. Then they released The Blair Witch Project, which was a huge success, but at the same time infuriated a lot of my fans. Fans I didn’t even know I had!” Afterwards, he says, the media seemed to discover him anew, complimenting his work and following him around like a newly-discovered star.

When asked how he would like to be remembered, he answers, “(as) an adventurous director. …Adventure! Adventure always!”

The upcoming anthology film Deathcember includes a short film he directed.