Greece’s best-known director Theo Angelopoulos says his next film will be devoted to the economic crisis rocking his country.

“I am preparing a film themed on the Greek crisis, entitled The Other Sea,” Mr Angelopoulos told reporters in Italy, according to statements reprinted in the semi-state Athens News Agency.

“The situation is terrible. All that which we have fought for did not become reality. The economic crisis of my country leaves me speechless, I see no way out,” said the 76-year-old director, winner of the prestigious Palme D’Or prize at Cannes in 1998.

An early draft of the script follows a troupe of actors struggling to mount a performance of Bertold Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, ANA said.

It also tracks a family relationship between a father and his daughter, symbolising the generation that created the Greek crisis and those dealing with its consequences.

After years of government deficits, Greece nearly went bankrupt last year and has since subsisted on a €110-billion loan from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

It has been forced to make sweeping spending cuts affecting wages, pensions and state services in a recession that has cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.

“Europe was a dream that collapsed very quickly,” Angelopoulos said.

“We are not alone. Ireland, Portugal and Spain also face serious economic difficulty. Italy itself is not doing so well either. Perhaps Europe has gone bankrupt,” he said.