Forty years after the Oscar-winning Z, the poignant account of the political turmoil in Greece during the 1960s, Costa Gavras is set to return to his native country to direct his next film structured as a French-Greek co-production.

The project was announced today at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival where Gavras participates in a discussion on film preservation in his role as president of the prestigious French Cinematheque.

The film, Eden is West, is set to shoot from late March 2008 for five weeks in France and another five weeks in Greece. Gavras will produce alongside his and producer-wife Michelle Ray's own French outlet KG Productions and the Greek distribution/production powerhouse Odeon SA run by Manos Krezias. It is understood that negotiations are underway with potential Italian and German co-production partners to join the $11.7m (Euros 8m) project. The producers will also seek Eurimages backing.

Backers include the Greek Pericles Katsioulas' On Telecoms and East Media Services. Pathe is handling world sales.

The screenplay signed by Gavras in collaboration with his usual writing partner Jean Claude Grunberg deals with the topical subject of illegal economic immigrants trying to enter the European Union member countries.

Having defined the film as a road movie, Gavras stressed to ScreenDaily.com that 'though the subject calls for a different directing style from my past projects the approach is not to be documentary-like and I do not intend to shoot in video. I would rather adopt a fluid camera work through extensive use of steadycam.'

'Like in all my past projects [I don't want to] situate the action and the characters in a precise country -- leaving it to the spectator to form his own opinion and idea about the historical and socio-political background of the facts depicted in the film.'

The project is actually in the pre-production stage. Locations have been locked both in France and Greece. The casting process is centered around the search of a young actor for the main role of Elias, the illegal immigrant who sets off for the ' eden ' of the industrialized European countries. Though the story touches to Gavras' own background-he himself set off as an immigrant, though not ilegal, in the 1950s, leaving his native Greece for France - the director denied any autobiographical similarities with Elias.

Greek, French and German actors are expected to form the multinational cast. The crew will also be multinational under the helm of Gavras' usual collaborator, French DoP Patrick Blossier.

KG Productions has a long record of quality oriented productions. Apart from Gavras own films it has raised many projects both in France and in Italy such as Mehdi Charref's Cartouches Gauloises, Tony Gatlif's Mondo and Roberto Faenza's Sostiene Perreira. It has already one French-Greek co-production under the belt with the Pandelis Voulgaris' Nyfes (Brides), executively produced in 2004 by Martin Scorsese.

Odeon SA, apart from work in successful local productions, has already taken co-production roles in such past projects as Emir Kusturica's Black Cat, White Cat and Volker Schlondorff's Homo Faber (Voyager).

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