Abel Ferrara (Italian: [ferˈraːra]; born July 19, 1951) is an American filmmaker. He is best known for the provocative and often controversial content in his movies and his use and redefinition of neo-noir imagery. A long-time independent filmmaker, some of his best known movies include the New York-set, gritty crime thrillers The Driller Killer (1979), Ms .45 (1981), King of New York (1990), Bad Lieutenant (1992), and The Funeral (1996), chronicling violent crime in urban settings with spiritual overtones.

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.

Ferrara was born in the Bronx of Italian and Irish descent. He was raised Catholic, which influenced much of his work. At 8 years old, he moved to Peekskill in Westchester County, New York and he started making movies at Rockland Community College. Later, he attended the film conservatory at SUNY Purchase, where he directed several short films.

Ferrara studied at the San Francisco Art Institute; one of his teachers and influences there was the famous avant-garde director Rosa von Praunheim. 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. Finding himself out of work after leaving film school in 1976, Ferrara directed his first feature: a pornographic film titled 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy, using a pseudonym. Starring with his then-girlfriend, he recalled having to step in front of the camera for one scene to perform in a hardcore sex scene: "It's bad enough paying a guy $200 to fuck your girlfriend, then he can't get it up."

Ferrara first drew a cult following with his second feature film, an exploitation movie titled The Driller Killer (1979), an urban slasher film about an artist (played by the director himself) who goes on a killing spree with a power drill. In the United Kingdom, the movie made it on a list of "video nasties" created by moral crusaders that led to prosecutions under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 and to the passing of new legislation which forced all video releases to appear before the British Board of Film Classification for rating.

The director's next feature was Ms .45 (1981), a "rape revenge" movie about a mute garment worker turned vigilante (Zoë Tamerlis). Reviewers called it "a provocative, disreputable movie, well worth seeing".

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.

Ferrara worked on two Michael Mann-produced television series, directing the two-hour pilot for Crime Story (aired September 18, 1986), starring Dennis Farina, and two episodes of the series Miami Vice.