Francis Ford Coppola will move into a more personal style of filmmaking with his next film, the story of an artistic Italian immigrant family making its way in Argentina.

To be called Tetro, it is being seen as a fictionalized version of the story of what Coppola describes as his own "very unusual family."

Francis Ford Coppola, shown in April 2006, will make a film about an artistic family of Italian immigrants living in Argentina.
(Associated Press)

His family, Italians who immigrated to New York, features several generations of artists.

His father, Carmine Coppola, was a flautist for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and his daughter, Sofia Coppola, is also a director.

"I think at this age, I'm more disposed to look at my life in terms of dramatic material," the 67-year-old filmmaker said Tuesday from Napa Valley, Calif.

He admitted the film has autobiographical elements.

"Maybe I'm less frightened or more confident about writing something that is fiction even though it has its basis in real things that I've seen and felt. Maybe it won't offend anybody, I hope."

Coppola, maker of the Godfather films and an Oscar winner for Patton, returned to directing after a 10-year hiatus with Youth Without Youth, a film he is finishing.

The film takes place right before the Second World War 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.

After making The Rainmaker in 1997, Coppola put his directing projects on hold, including the long-planned futuristic effort Megalopolis.

Coppola said he now prefers to make smaller, more personal films, writing his own material like Woody Allen.

"It's a very big change of the type of career that I had before. I always wanted to be a filmmaker who wrote his own original material," he said.

Tetro, to be shot in Buenos Aires late this year, will star Matt Dillon, who also starred in Coppola's The Outsiders and Rumble Fish.