Greek director Theo Angelopoulos has died in a road accident aged 76. Here we look back at his body of work, which included The Travelling Players, Ulysses Gaze and Landscape in the Mist

The Travelling Players (1975)

Theo Angelopoulos's breakthrough film is a political allegory in disguise; a leftist analysis of democracy, fascism and national identity, shrewdly gussied up as the tale of a theatre tour through the Greek provinces and shot under the noses of the country's military junta. Rigorous, spartan, and yet brimming over with pungent mythic allusions, The Travelling Players established its creator as one of the most distinctive European directors of his generation.

Landscape in the Mist (1988)

The director hit the road again with this stark, soulful tale of two runaways in search of their missing father. The way ahead leads through misty towns and snowy wilderness, while the early social-realist air tilts, by degrees, towards surrealism.

Ulysses' Gaze (1995)

Arguably Angelopoulos's most potent, fully realised work, this cast Harvey Keitel as an exiled film-maker in search of the cineaste's Holy Grail (three lost reels of early silent film). Ulysses' Gaze amounts to a turbulent portrait of the Balkans in crisis, like a stormy abstract canvas set in motion, all but bursting with indelible scenes, such as the Athens protest, the Lenin bust on the barge ... or this haunting shot of a stage-play in the ruins.

Eternity and a Day (1998)

The director narrowed his focus with this elegant, elegiac Palme d'Or-winner about an ailing author (Bruno Ganz) making peace with his past. Yet even here, he gives us the sense of a wider world - vast and often threatening - hiding away in the shadows, just off the road.

The Weeping Meadow (2004)

Good news for fans who feared Angelopoulos might be mellowing with age. The Weeping Meadow found him back at his most stern and forbidding, spooning some roughage for the soul in the form of an austere Oepidal drama - and throwing a few exacting comments on Greek history into the mix.

Angelopoulos on set, shooting The Dust of Time (2008)

Theo Angelopolous - the master of the long take, the grand inquisitor of Greek national identity - was killed while crossing a busy road near the set of his latest picture. Here he is, at work on his 2008 film The Dust of Time, which starred Irene Jacob and Willem Dafoe. "Go!" he yells as the cameras start rolling, and then shuffles back to the monitor to watch his visions come true.

• Theo Angelopoulos
• World cinema

Xan Brooks

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