The south of Italy is famous for giving its pasta peculiar shapes — take the orecchiette, shaped after the human ear, for example. Fileja comes from the southern Calabria region of Italy and has a swirly shape which makes the pasta look like an elongated screw (via The Pasta Project). About three to four millimeters in thickness, fileja is almost always made fresh and at home, rather than bought in a dried form from a store.
To make fileja, a dough of wheat flour, salt, and water is rolled into strings of small ropes that are no longer than three inches in length. The rope of dough is then pressed onto a small metal stick traditionally called danaco or dinacolo, which is rolled a couple of times till the file gets its shape. The stick is removed from the dough and the fileja is then tossed in a sauce. In Calabria, fileja is typically eaten on Sundays and holidays, soaking in a sauce of tomatoes or minced pork. When rolled fresh, fileja also goes well with meaty, heavy, and spicy sauces, especially those made with a spicy 'Nduja sausage from Calabria.