Ferrara also worked in a wide array of genres, including the sci-fi remake Body Snatchers (1993), cyberpunk thriller New Rose Hotel (1998), the religious drama Mary (2005), the black comedy Go Go Tales (2007), and the biopic Pasolini (2014), as well as in several documentary filmmaking projects.

[5] Ferrara studied at the San Francisco Art Institute; one of his teachers and influences there was the famous avant-garde director Rosa von Praunheim.

[6] In the early 1970s, while still in art school, Ferrara directed a number of independently produced short films which included The Hold Up and Could This Be Love.

[9] The director's next feature was Ms .45 (1981), a "rape revenge" movie about a mute garment worker turned murderer (Zoë Tamerlis).

[10] In 1984, Ferrara was hired to direct Fear City, starring Melanie Griffith, Billy Dee Williams, Rae Dawn Chong and María Conchita Alonso.

When a "kung fu slasher" stalks and murders young women who work in a seedy Times Square strip club, a disgraced boxer portrayed by Tom Berenger uses his fighting skills to defeat the killer.

[13] King of New York (1990) stars Christopher Walken as gangster Frank White, Laurence Fishburne, Wesley Snipes, David Caruso and Giancarlo Esposito.

[15][16] Bad Lieutenant received Spirit Awards nominations for Best Director and Best Actor, and despite its controversial content, the movie was lauded by critics.

In the mid-1990s Ferrara directed two well-received independent movies: The Addiction (1995),[18] photographed in black-and-white, stars Lili Taylor as a philosophy student who succumbs to a vampire as she studies the problem of evil and philosophical pedagogy, represented by the most violent events of the 20th century.

The Funeral (1996),[19] starring Walken, Sciorra, Chris Penn, Isabella Rossellini, Benicio del Toro, Vincent Gallo and Gretchen Mol, was nominated for five Independent Spirit Awards including Best Director.

He recorded commentaries for Driller Killer[21] and King of New York[22] and made Mary (2005), a religious-themed multi-plot movie starring Juliette Binoche, Matthew Modine, Forest Whitaker, Heather Graham, Marion Cotillard, and Stefania Rocca.

[25] The docudrama received little attention and poor reviews but Werner Herzog's reboot Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans was selected for competition at the prestigious festival.

[26] In September 2011, 4:44 Last Day on Earth, starring Willem Dafoe and Shanyn Leigh, premiered at the main competition of the 68th Venice International Film Festival.

[27] Ferrara's Welcome to New York, a fictionalized version of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case starring Gérard Depardieu and Jacqueline Bisset, was released on video on demand in 2014.

Shortly after Ferrara directed the documentary Sportin' Life, about the beginning of quarantine measures in Europe a few days after the Berlinale premiere of Siberia, during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2022, Ferrara's Padre Pio, starring Shia LaBeouf and Asia Argento, premiered at the "Giornate degli Autori" section of the 79th Venice Film Festival on September 2, 2022.

[49] Influences on Ferrara's work include "the Stones and Dylan … DaVinci, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen and all of the great New York film makers".