Theo Angelopoulos  

France/Greece 
 

But here was a cineaste who could talk at length on cinema and politics and one who enjoyed listening to another's critical opinion of what the festival had to offer each day. So when it came time for his own Travelling Players to screen in the Directors' Fortnight, the Majestic Bar that night exploded into a week-long Greek celebration to honor a genuine auteur director discovered almost overnight. 

Ever since, Theo Angelopoulos has been generally referred to as "a critics' director" – and, indeed, no film artist apparently feels more at ease among critics (to use that term in its hallowed sense) than he does. Angelopoulos probably should have won the Golden Palm three years ago at Cannes for Ulysses's Gaze, and, according to at least one inside report, he narrowly missed winning the Golden Lion at Venice in 1988 for Landscape in the Mist (awarded the Silver Lion instead). No matter, he has pocketed one International Critics (FIPRESCI) Prize after another – the last for Ulysses' Gaze (to accompany the Special Grand Jury Prize of the International Jury) and the first for Travelling Players two decades before, both in Cannes. 

Mia Eoniotita Ke Mia Mera (Eternity and a Day), Theo Angelopoulos's eleventh feature film, will therefore be watched closely at Cannes, if for no other reason than because it's well positioned on the last day of the competition. But there are, of course, other reasons. This marks his fourth appearance in the Riviera sweepstakes – after Voyage to Cythera in 1984, The Suspended Leg of the Stork in 1991, and Ulysses's Gaze in 1995. Although each jury decision is subject to pressures of an unknown nature, let's just say that a slot on the next to last day could save a lot of people embarrassment. 

The cinema of Theo Angelopoulos is the result of infinite preparation and teamwork in collaboration with a closely knit production crew. Yorgos Arvanitis, his cameraman from the very beginning, is internationally renowned for his long-take sequences, powerful rhythmic movements, and deliberately orchestrated zooms timed with the changing positions of the protagonists. Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra, who has collaborated with Antonioni and Tarkovsky (among other giants of the cinema), has been with Angelopoulos for the last six films, ever since Voyage to Cythera. 

Yannis Tsitsopoulos has edited his last four films, for which Eleni Karaindrou has also composed the music. All these, in addition to Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau, Harvey Keitel and Maia Morgenstern on the other side of the camera – now Bruno Ganz and Isabelle Renauld in Eternity and a Day. 

It's the director's stamp on his work that fascinates most of all. In Travelling Players we are offered a history lesson on Greek history from 1941 to 1949, from the beginning of the Second World War to the end of the Civil War, all encapsulated within a modern interpretation of Aeschylus' Oresteia. In Ulysses's Gaze Harvey Keitel returns from his long voyage to encounter modern-day female variants on Homer's epic, each played with a haunting presence by the same actress (Maia Morgenstern). 

Voyages and landscapes – including rooms and spatial entities – can be found at the core of his cinematic vision. In Eternity and a Day Alexander (Bruno Ganz) is putting his affairs in order in his roomy villa, ready to depart for the hospital "on a long voyage" when the pain is no longer bearable. For the moment, however, he has time to reflect on his past, triggered by the letters of his wife Anna (Isabelle Renauld). But the present too has a way of breaking the spell – in the person of a little Albanian boy. Ron Holloway