In the Bengali film Paglu (2011), a US-born Indian girl returns to her roots in Kolkata to get to know her country better. Within days she meets and falls in love with a boy from a different social strata, causing her father much heartburn. And yet, for their romantic dates, the couple miraculously lands up in Italy’s Tuscany and Lombardy region, where they jive to catchy songs in colour-coordinated costumes. Shot against exotic backdrops, these songs are largely the high points of an otherwise humble production.

This is made possible by the Italian production company Occhidi Ulisee (Ulysses’s eyes), run by Ivano Fucci and his partner Michele Saragoni. “Imagine a place like St Peter’s Square, where you usually see pilgrims and tourists, and then suddenly one day the local people go to church and they see Dev and Koel (stars of Paglu ) dancing. Also, it is February when it is very cold and they are wearing shorts. People can’t believe anyone would come all the way from India to shoot a song here,” says Fucci, who has facilitated the shoots of 10 Bengali films since Paglu . Fucci is based out of Mumbai, where he strikes deals with producers looking to shoot in Europe, while Saragoni handles the business from Italy.

In three years of operation, the company has worked on 28 Indian films, mostly Bengali, Tamil and Telugu. “We started by going to the easier markets. We have done only one Hindi film and some TV shows. Right now, we are ready to meet Bollywood producers. We now have enough experience to handle bigger budgets,” says Fucci, who came to India eight years ago to learn English. He’s now polishing his Hindi to help him navigate the film industries in the South and East.

There aren’t too many outfits that offer the same services as Fucci’s company — from providing equipment to scouting for locations to casting background dancers and extras. Typically, when a producer wants to shoot in Europe, he visits a travel agent who specialises in this area. The agent then negotiates with his contacts in that country to help set up the shoot. Chennai-based Travel Masters India Corporation is one of the biggest companies that deal in film tourism. “Filmmakers usually go to the agent with a budget for the song they want to shoot. They also show a reference video, which is usually another song from another film,” says Fucci. What sets Occhidi Ulisee apart is that it eliminates the role of the middleman, and directly takes over the production.

The first-ever Indian film that Fucci saw was Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995). He studied the film closely while writing a report on how the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer helped put Switzerland on the map for Indians. More recently, he feels films like Queen (2014) and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011) have had a powerful impact in promoting Europe as a tourist destination. “These are the kind of films we are looking at now. The story of the film should link to the culture of the place,” says Fucci. He adds that their experience of working in China has been wildly different. There the film’s writers spend weeks in Europe to recce the locations even before they start writing the script. “Here too, we are looking for opportunities to read the script beforehand and understand which location is best suited,” he says. Till then he’s happy to squeeze in the grandeur of Italy in the brief songs that come his way.

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