A historical drama is being filmed portraying the life of an Italian man who was interned in the island during the Second World War.

Peel promenade, the old Castletown police station and Cregneash are some of the island’s sites that may appear on your screens, as part of a short film created by Hoofprint Productions.

The London-based company has been filming scenes for the production, called ’Brothers of Italy’, this week.

Director Marco Petrucco, who helped direct Netflix series ’The End of the F***ing World’, was inspired by the story of his Italian grandfather, Sante, who was admitted into an internment camp in the island at the age of 21.

’The story begins with the arrest of my grandfather and his brother in Walsall,’ he said. ’The two brothers have two different stories, as one goes off to war. We follow my grandfather and show a snippet of his time in the Isle of Man.’

Playing the lead role of Sante, a tiler who lived in the UK for many years, is Italian actor Niccolo Besio who has studied at film schools in London, New York and Los Angeles.

Sebastian Armesto, known for his role as Clive Lucas in ITV series Broadchurch, will be playing a British major and Boardwalk Empire actor, Marc Pickering, will star as a military police sergeant.

Manxman John Craine is also the director of photography and many of the cast extras are from the island.

At the time of speaking, Marco’s wife Samantha Seivwright, a producer of the production, added: ’We’ve constructed part of the barbed wire fence that kept all the prisoners of war in for one of our scenes.

’We’ll also be working on a football match later, as the internees used to play. We’re wanting to show normal camp life.

’There will also be a scene of Manx language, as we wanted to get a feel of the Isle of Man. It’s important that the island is represented.’

Marco, who grew up in Walsall, continued: ’The whole process has taken 12 to 18 months from first idea to set at the moment.

’For me, it’s been quite amazing. I never got the chance to talk to my grandfather much about his story.

’I researched things about his past that fascinated me and talked to my grandmother and relatives to farm out that story about him.

’When I came to the Isle of Man, I met with a few different people from Culture Vannin, Arts Council the film board and others, who had a lot of extra information for us.’

One piece of information that the director is still waiting to uncover is which internment camp his grandfather lived in.

’It’s in an archive record and I’m trying to find that out,’ he explained.

’Not a lot of people know about [the internment camps in the island].

’We want to tell this story because it’s never been told before.

’The production started as an idea about my grandfather, but it’s become so much more than that.

’It’s been interesting to see how relevant it is today, for instance Trump trying to ban Muslims from the country, which is all based on stereotyping. Still today we stereotype people, we need to start being more open minded towards one another,’ he said.

Discussions are taking place in the hopes that the short film will be used as a pilot film, which could lead to a series being created.