Coppola won his first Oscar in 1971 for the Patton screenplay

Coppola's first film since 1997's The Rainmaker will be a low-budget adaptation of Youth without Youth, a novel by Romanian author Mircea Eliade.

He will finance the production himself and has written the screenplay, says film industry magazine Variety.

The story is about a professor who goes on the run after a sudden incident before World War II.

The chase takes him to Romania, Switzerland, Malta and India.

British actor Tim Roth, whose credits include Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, will lead the cast.

"I was excited to discover, in this tale by Eliade, the key themes that I most hope to understand better: time, consciousness and the dreamlike basis of reality," Apocalypse Now director Coppola said in a statement.

"For me, it is indeed a return to the ambitions I had for work in cinema as a student."

Oscar nominations

Filming is due to begin in Bucharest later this year.

Since The Rainmaker, an adaptation of a John Grisham novel, Coppola has reportedly been concentrating on his careers as a producer, hotelier and wine impresario.

Last month it was announced that he would produce an adaptation of Beat writer Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road with The Motorcycle Diaries director Walter Salles.

Coppola has won five Oscars, the first of which was for his screenplay for Patton in 1971, starring George C Scott.

He won the best director Oscar in 1975 for the Godfather: Part II, which also took the best picture award.