Filmmaker Zack Snyder is preparing to turn the page from his recent blockbusters with "The Last Photograph", a war drama he has long described as his most personal undertaking.

The film, markedly devoid of superheroes, zombies or intergalactic rebellions, represents a striking departure from Snyder's recent oeuvre.

Filming is slated to commence later this month across multiple international locations, including Colombia, Iceland and Los Angeles, reports The Hollywood Reporter.

The story traces the ordeal of a retired DEA agent who, following the ruthless killing of his diplomat kin in South America, forges an uneasy alliance with a traumatised war photographer, the sole witness to the crime. Together, they set out on a mission that drifts into the surreal, where memory, trauma and survival blur.

Stuart Martin and Fra Fee, both of whom appeared in Snyder’s Rebel Moon movies, will star in the feature, an indie whose budget will be significantly lower than many of the epics Snyder has captained before. The screenplay, penned by longtime Snyder collaborator Kurt Johnstad (300, Rebel Moon), is adapted from an original story by the director himself.

Snyder also has his composers lined up: Hans Zimmer, Steven Doar and Omer Benyamin. Notably, the film will benefit from Colombia's CINA tax incentive, offering a 35 percent deduction on qualified audio-visual expenditures.

Snyder is producing with creative partner and wife Deborah Snyder and Wesley Coller via their Stone Quarry banner. Also producing will be Gianni Nunnari and his Hollywood Gang Productions company.

The project has gone under some changes during its 20 years or so in development. For one, the setting used to be Afghanistan and centred on a war correspondent being the lone survivor of an attack on a group of Americans. In the early 2010s, Christian Bale and Sean Penn were attached to star, before Snyder took a detour into his DC movies.

“The idea of taking camera in hand and simply making a movie in an intimate way is very appealing to me,” Snyder said in a statement provided to The Hollywood Reporter. “The Last Photograph is a meditation of life and death, embodying some of the trials that I have experienced in my own life and the exploration of those ideas through image making.”

Snyder has several movie projects in development, among them an MMA slugfest titled "Brawler" and an action thriller centered around the "LAPD".