This Europe: Italian film director breathes new life into Pinocchio

While intergalactic warriors and web-spinning superstars may be the stuff of heroes in other countries, in Italy a long-nosed wooden puppet called Pinocchio still holds centre-stage.

Roberto Benigni, the Oscar-winning director and star of Life is Beautiful, has breathed fresh life into one of Italy's most traditional and beloved characters with a film based on the classic 19th-century fairy-tale.

Sales of hand-made wooden Pinocchio dolls are soaring and modern merchandise, including baseball caps and backpacks featuring the mischievous liar, is disappearing from toy-shop shelves. A children's park in Tuscany has been dubbed Pinocchioland in expectation of a surge in interest and publishers have reissued The Adventures of Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi's original 1883 best-seller about a naughty puppet in search of boyhood.

In the classic fable, the elderly Geppetto carves a puppet from a mysterious piece of wood. Pinocchio, an endearing mischief-maker whose nose grows every time he tells a lie, comes to life but aches to become a real boy.

His adventures on the way to learning honesty and bravery are peopled by a talking cricket, a blue fairy, an evil puppeteer and a giant fish, figures which have all become popular characters in Italian folklore.

The new Pinocchio movie is due to hit cinemas across Italy on 11 October and the film industry is betting that it will be the most popular movie ever in Italy, squeezing out the previous record-holder, Benigni's own Life is Beautiful.

Benigni stars in the film, which is just the latest in a string of Pinocchio adaptations. A silent, black-and-white Italian Pinocchio was made in 1911, followed by Disney's animated version in 1940, as well as several made-for-TV films, one starring Mickey Rooney.