Coppola’s first movie in a decade premieres at Rome Film Festival

ROME (AP) — It is Francis Ford Coppola’s first movie in a decade, and the Oscar-winning director said Saturday that audiences should be in no hurry before deciding if “Youth Without Youth” is good or bad.

“Youth Without Youth” is Coppola’s first movie since “The Rainmaker” in 1997. It was having its public premiere Saturday evening at the Rome Film Festival.

At an earlier screening for the press, reactions were mixed, and Coppola asked people to see it more than once.

“Youth Without Youth” tells a metaphysical story about a 70-year-old Romanian professor of linguistics who miraculously becomes younger after being struck by lightning.

The accident gives him abnormal intellectual abilities which attract the attention of the Nazis as World War II looms.