Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola is to return to directing after an eight year break – with a low-budget film starring British actor Tim Roth, it emerged today.
Coppola will make a big screen adaptation of Youth without Youth, a novel by Romanian author Mircea Eliade.
He will finance the production himself and has written the screenplay, according to Variety magazine.
The story is about a professor whose life changes after a sudden incident before the Second World War.
Becoming a fugitive, he is pursued through far-flung locations including Romania, Switzerland, Malta and India.
“I was excited to discover, in this tale by Eliade, the key themes that I most hope to understand better: time, consciousness and the dreamlike basis of reality,” Coppola said in a statement.
“For me, it is indeed a return to the ambitions I had for work in cinema as a student.”
It will be the first movie made by the Apocalypse Now director since The Rainmaker in 1997.
He has reportedly been concentrating on his careers as a producer, hotelier and wine impresario.
Roth, whose credits include Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, will co-star with Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz and Marcel Iures.
Filming is due to begin in Bucharest later this year.