Hard to believe it’s been so long:

After an eight-year absence, Francis Ford Coppola is returning to the director’s chair.

He will begin filming “Youth Without Youth” in Romania on Oct. 3. Starring Tim Roth, the film is adapted from a novella by Romanian philosopher-author Mircea Eliade.

“It’s a parable, it’s a fable. It’s almost like an intellectual `Twilight Zone,’” the “Godfather” director told The Associated Press by phone Friday, speaking from Romania. “In a way it’s like a Hitchcock picture and Tim Roth is the Jimmy Stewart — the guy who gets caught up in something fascinating and big.”

The film takes place right before World War II and chronicles how a professor’s life is altered after an “extraordinary change” late in his life, which leads to Nazi interest in studying him.

It will be Coppola’s first movie since 1997’s “The Rainmaker.” source