ANTALYA: Renowned Hollywood director Francis Ford Coppola feels there are too many films being made in Hollywood which are either sequels, re-makes or repetitive and this is leading to skyrocketing budgets.

He has therefore been wanting to give a new kind of experience to his viewers and that was the reason for his long hiatus from filmmaking.

Speaking about the extensive use of Sanskrit in his latest film Youth Without Youth screened at the ongoing International Eurasia Film Festival here, he said that tales told in ancient Indian scriptures in Sanskrit are very simple myths in themselves but hold very deep meaning. These tales showed a larger philosophical aspect to life than the western mind often comprehended.

Youth Without Youth (his first movie since The Rainmaker in 1997) has used Sanskrit shlokas and dialogues as a major highlight of the film. The film is a metaphysical story about a 70-year old professor Dominic Matei (played by Tim Roth) who gets magical powers that transform him back to a 30-year old youngster after he is hit by a bolt of lightening on Easter Sunday in 1938.

The Nazis learn about this and want him, and he has to escape by taking on a new identity. And his own dreams of unfulfilled love torment him since he had not been able to marry the woman he had loved in his younger days. This gets fulfilled when he finds a mystical woman who appears to hang between her present and past lives.

Coppola adapted, produced and directed the film based on the 1976 novel by Romanian-born religious historian and philosopher Mircea Eliade. The film also stars Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, Andre M Hennicke, Marcel Iures, and introduces Alexandra Pirici while Matt Damon makes a special appearance.

Speaking about the research involved and the extensive use of Sanskrit and the shooting experiences in India, Coppola said that Mircea Eliade was a renowned Orientalist. The film, which has been shot mostly in Romania, also has some sequences shot in Mumbai.

"While writing a screenplay, I was also assessing my own place in cinema. I was already 65 and did not know what my place was and what I should do," he said earlier, addressing a press conference.

When he saw the story by Mircea Eliade, he thought it was like the story of Faust and he liked the interesting ideas of existence, and re-birth.