By MARTA FALCONI Associated Press Writer

ROME (AP) — Even though ''Youth Without Youth'' is his first movie in a decade, Francis Ford Coppola insists he isn't making a comeback to film-making.

''I never went anywhere,'' the Oscar-winning director said in an interview Sunday with The Associated Press. ''A comeback is like when a fighter stops fighting and then goes and says I'm retiring and then makes a comeback. Who is to say what a film director's schedule has to be?''

''Youth Without Youth'' is a metaphysical story about a 70 —year — old Romanian professor of linguistics who miraculously becomes younger after being struck by lightning.

The film, which premiered at the Rome Film Festival Saturday night, is Coppola's first movie since ''The Rainmaker'' in 1997.

''I didn't really ever stop making movies; I think that moviemaking is a stop and start process,'' he said. ''If you then start to write a project that takes a long time or if you are ultimately having difficulty achieving what you were trying to do ... things could prolong.''

Coppola said that before taking on this film, he was working on ''Megalopolis,'' a script about New York in the future that he's labored on for more than two decades. The Sept. 11, 2001, attack on New York caused the project to be put on hold.

''I was there trying to make a film about utopia set in Manhattan when it was problematic, so then I had to rethink what I would do, and until I found a story that I thought I could do and finance myself, it appeared as though I had stopped making films.''

''Youth Without Youth,'' starring Tim Roth, is adapted from a novella by Romanian philosopher-author Mircea Eliade.