Angelopoulos' The Other Sea starring Toni Servillo to shoot from December

Palme d’Or winning Greek auteur Theo Angelopoulos will kick off principal photography this December 26 on his new film entitled The Other Sea (L’altro Mare), which focuses on Greece in the age of austerity.

Italian actor Toni Servillo, who stars, announced the news on Monday from the Turin Film Festival, which kicked off last weekend.

Amedeo Pagani’s Rome-based Classic is the principal producer in the Italy/Greek/Turkish co-production that focuses on contemporary Athens and Greece under the squeeze of the European financial crisis and the desperation of people who lose their jobs as well as the responsibility of the political class.

Servillo told the press: “Angelopoulos said he selected me because he has a liking for Italian actors.”

Servillo will portray a father in a story told through the lens of a father-daughter relationship. His character is also a local-politician who operates a somewhat shady business in which he assists illegal immigrants from Macedonia and Albania into Italy via Greece. “It’s a story that is not very far from what we are living in Italy,” Servillo added.

Meanwhile, the culturally inclined daughter (portrayed by a Greek theatre actress) in the film directs a version of Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera that she sets in a factory where many workers, including immigrants, have been laid off.

Producer Pagani told Screen that the film’s budget would be between €4-5m and that the story is “very current” and “the play is a metaphor for the situation of Greece today.” The film will be shot across six weeks in Athens.