Italian director Mario Martone said that his latest film Nostalgia is very similar to his 1995 film L’amore molesto (Troubling Love). During a panel discussion at Deadline’s Contenders Film: New York event, Martone explained the connection between adapting Elena Ferrante’s first novel L’amore molesto and Ermanno Rea’s book Nostalgia for the big screen.

“In L’amore molesto we followed this woman,” Martone said. “We walk alongside her, and we enter into her past. In Nostalgia, something similar happens. You have a man, and we walk with him and we enter into his past. ”Nostalgia, which premiered this year at the Cannes Film Festival, follows Felice Lasco, played by Pierfrancesco Favino, who, after living 40 years abroad, returns to Naples and rediscovers places and codes of the city, facing a past that eats him away.