Coppola to shoot ‘Tetro’ in Argentina with Gallo and Bardem

“After a while I realized that I was getting further and further away from what my original intentions had been.
So at this age I decided, ‘Well, why don’t I make the kinds of films I wanted to do when I was 18? I’ll just do it later in life.’”

The 68-year-old Francis Ford Coppola explains in an interview with The Associated Press.

The five-time Oscar winner, best known for “The Godfather” trilogy about the Corleone mafia family, is preparing to shoot a film about a much different, but equally dysfunctional, Italian-immigrant clan.

“Tetro,” for which Coppola wrote an original screenplay, follows two sons of a great but monstrously self-absorbed orchestra conductor in contemporary Argentina.

Much of the film will be shot in La Boca (Argentina), a neighborhood marked by the legacy of poor Italian immigrants who arrived by the shiploads in the early 20th century.

Researching his tale, Coppola discovered many parallels between Buenos Aires and the New York he grew up in.

“Italian families emigrated to Argentina and the United States, and very often brothers in the same family would go two different directions,” Coppola explains, relaxing in the courtyard of his new home and studio, which comes complete with the steel barbecue grill no self-respecting Argentine would do without.
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