La Passione is a 1996 British drama film written and produced by Chris Rea, directed by John B. Hobbs, and starring Sean Gallagher, Paul Shane and Shirley Bassey.
[4] It is a tale of 10-year-old northern boy, the son of an Italian immigrant ice-cream making family, who develops a lifelong obsession with motor racing and especially with the real-life racer Wolfgang Von Trips, who was killed in his sharknose Ferrari 156 at the Monza Grand Prix in 1961.
[4] Rea commented how "everyone's got a Von Trips in their life ... for some people it happened through football or movies - a day when a boy's empty, innocent mind suddenly has all kinds of new stuff blown into it.
"[4] Rea initially wanted to direct his own screenplay but Warner Vision, the film's distributors, did not let him and appointed John B Hobbs, a retired television director.
"[4] In a 2016 interview he recalls that Billy Connolly and Peter Capaldi were in advanced talks to star, but his original idea and script were changed.