His latest cinematic masterpiece – the dramatic saga starring Willem Dafoe and Irène Jacob – thoroughly mixes the past, present and even the future to the point where it is sometimes even hard to follow the action without losing part of the plot.

Irène Jacob in "The Dust of Time"

Rich in memories, music and emotions of its numerous characters, “The Dust of Time” basically revolves around the lives of Spyros and Eleni, who were separated from each other during the Second World War. He emigrated to America; she found herself exiled to the Soviet Union. Torn apart by the Siberian gulags and the Nazi concentration camps, they had to come to grips with insuperable obstacles, only to reunite half a century later.

Is it his most personal film to date?

“I think all films are personal in this or that way. It’s just that some don’t hide it at all, while others do, just a little,” Angelopoulus replied.

One of the characters in “The Dust of Time” has been quoted as saying that the only “home” he has is the stories he is telling. Angelopoulus agreed that it is exactly his personal point of view.

“Cinema is my way of self-expression, my possibility of communication with myself, and with the world.”

His award-winning films have been screened at many of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. What motivates his ambition after a career that has spanned half a century?

“It’s not the ambition, really. I don’t tell stories to satisfy my ambitions. It’s a way of finding a balance, harmony, dialogue with the world. I don’t know any other ways of staying in touch with the world. But it’s not my profession, after all I don’t have any,” said the philosophical director who studied literature in Sorbonne and worked as a journalist before he tried his hand as a director back in 1970.

“Cinema for me is a way of living, and deep inside, la raison d'être.”

Willem Dafoe in "The Dust of Time"

He adds that it was also an important means of finding a common language with his wife and children.

“I have an impression I’ve failed to know my children well enough. I was always on the move, on set… The only way of communicating with my children was telling them stories to help them fall asleep at night. One of the stories I once made up was ‘Landscape in the Mist’ – the film that I later made. It was a story which I told my children when they went to bed and this way it became a scenario! You see, the communication is always there and it’s direct.”

But haven’t all stories, as many readers oftentimes complain, already been told and retold a thousand times?

“Yes, of course, but what counts most is telling your personal story, which somehow turns out to be someone else’s story too.”

How does Theo know that his story will be interesting for the others?

“When I get the response, the reaction. Listen, an incredible story happened to me years ago when I just made one of my best-known films, ‘The Travelling Players’, and it was screened at the Montreal Festival in Canada. After the screening, a woman left the cinema house, all in tears, saying that it was her story. Some time later in Japan, at the Hiroshima Museum, a Korean man came up to me, crying and saying it was his story. Then somewhere in the Greek mountains, an old man told me, it was his story too! That’s how it works, you see.”

It looks like the dust of time is nothing to fret about for the indefatigable Greek director.

Valeria Paikova, RT