Greek director Yannis Smaragdis, known for the films Kavafy, El Greco and God Loves Caviar, has announced his new feature film, Nikos Kazantzakis.

The plot revolves around the life of the prolific poet, novelist and travel writer Nikos Kazantzakis. We are invited to follow him on his actual and spiritual journeys to places he loved and which led him to achieve, as he claimed, the abolition of fear and the conquest of a higher freedom.

“Through the film we want and we think it will highlight the large and attractive personality of Nikos Kazantzakis and the places he lived, loved and was fascinated by. The great Cretan writer said that what determined his life and work was ‘travelling and dreams’.

“This is what we will seek to emerge through the film. His trips to France, Austria, Germany and China, and through them his philosophical and metaphysical pursuits, as well as the ‘inside’, the ‘inner journey’,” says Smaragdis.

Kazantzakis gained international reputation for his works Zorba the Greek, The Last Temptation of Christ and Christ Recrucified among others.

In 1957, he lost the Nobel Prize for Literature to Albert Camus by one vote. Camus later said that Kazantzakis deserved the honour “a hundred times more” than himself. In total, Kazantzakis was nominated in nine different years.

The filming will take place in five different countries, Greece (Crete, Athens, Aegina) France (Paris and Antipolis), Austria (Vienna), Germany (Berlin) and China and is scheduled to begin in April 2016.

Casting includes Odysseus Papaspiliopoulos as the New Kazantzakis, Marina Kalogerou as Eleni Kazantzakis, Theodore Atheridis as George Zorbas, Zeta Duka as Melina Mercouri and Stathis Psaltis in the role of a monk.

According to the director, artists in general and people of cinema undertake a responsibility to give people courage in difficult times through their work.

“In today’s Europe, where there are tensions and differences, art must play its role, which is to unite people and give them strength,” says Smaragdis.