Youth Without Youth

Youth Without Youth is a 2007 fantasy drama film written, directed, and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the novella of the same name by Romanian author Mircea Eliade. The film is a co-production between the United States, Romania, France, Italy and Germany. It was the first film that Coppola had directed in ten years, since 1997's The Rainmaker. The film opens in 1938, with an elderly Romanian professor contemplating suicide. He is struck by lightning, and consequently finds himself rejuvenated. He subsequently develops psychic powers, which attract the attention of Nazi agents. He flees to Switzerland, where he meets a reincarnation of his past lover. He discovers information both about her various past incarnations, and about the evolutionary potential of humanity. The film premiered at the 2007 Rome Film Festival. It was distributed through Sony Pictures Classics in the United States (where it was released on December 14, 2007) and by Pathé Distribution in France. The music was composed by Argentinian classical composer Osvaldo Golijov. In an interview, Coppola said that he made the film as a meditation on time and on consciousness, which he considers a "changing tapestry of illusion", but he stated that the film may also be appreciated as a beautiful love story, or as a mystery.