A response, both to the 1995 centenary of cin­ema, and to the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, Angelopoulos' most recent film (which earned him the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes) describes the journey of A. (Keitel), a Greek-born filmmaker, working in the United States, who returns to his hometown after an absence of 35 years, ostensibly for a screening of his latest film. In fact, like so many Angelopoulos characters, he's searching for something: three undeveloped reels of film, allegedly shot at the turn of the century by the Menakias brothers.

Presumed lost for generations, A. learns they may be unearthed among the film archives of Sarajevo, and embarks upon a quest which takes him through the chaos and ruin of the Balkans and, ultimately, inevitably, to Bosnia, the centre of the catastrophe. A film about borders, both geo­graphical and psychological, about the various madnesses that nationhood is heir, Ulysses Gaze represents the director at his most accessible.