Riccardo Scamarcio to star in L'Ombra di Caravaggio.

A new film about the tumultuous life of Italian Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi, known to the world as Caravaggio, will have its premiere at the Rome Film Fest on 18 October before being released in cinemas across Italy on 3 November.

The Italian-language movie, titled L'Ombra di Caravaggio (Caravaggio's Shadow), is directed by Michele Placido and stars Riccardo Scamarcio as the brilliant but tormented artist.

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Produced by Goldenart Production with Rai Cinema, the film's international cast also includes Louis Garrel, Isabelle Huppert and Lolita Chammah.

The movie will explore the personality of the painter, "rebellious and restless, devoted and scandalous, independent and transgressive", according to the press release.

The film centres around a Vatican investigation into Caravaggio - after Pope Paul V discovered that the artist "used prostitutes, thieves and vagabonds in his sacred paintings" - to determine whether or not to pardon the painter from a death sentence for killing a man in a duel.

Placido's Caravaggio "is a cursed artist with absolute talent, but above all an ante litteram rock star, a rebel without a cause forced to face the disturbing implications of a reckless life, with his women and his demons, in which genius and recklessness coexist to give us a timeless character and a fascinating and universal icon".