An 800km pilgrimage changed Bill Bennett's life forever

Or what led him to do four more Caminos after that.

"I hadn't even heard of the Camino at that point," he said. "Our daughter was living in Spain at the time and I saw pilgrims starting off on their journeys and I thought 'what a stupid thing to do'. Next thing, I was doing it too.

"I'd never done anything crazy like this before. I was not a hiker, and I wasn't a Catholic and I was also not an adventure traveller.

"All this backpacking and wearing of heavy boots and flying off to France to walk ancient pilgrimage routes was a new experience, and not one that made me feel entirely comfortable."

And so Bill, an Australian based film director, set off on the long journey across Spain to Santiago de Compostela.

His discomfort increased markedly a few days later when his knee gave out - so the rest of the walk was a "pain management pilgrimage."

But he kept his sense of humour, then wrote a book - The Way, My Way - which became a best seller and now a movie of the same name that will be in cinemas across Australia on May 16.

In a career spanning more than 30 years, he's made 16 feature films and numerous documentaries.

Bill won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Picture and Best Director for his film Kiss or Kill, and been nominated a further 12 times, and he has had two films in Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival.

He has worked with Sandra Bullock, Eric Bana, Burt Reynolds, Frances O'Connor and many more.

The movie stars Australian actor Chris Haywood, a friend of Bill's for 40 years. But it was never meant to be that way.

The Way, My Way was originally going to be made Hollywood style.

"We approached Pierce Brosnan, Mel Gibson and Ricky Gervais to play me," Bill said.

"Thankfully, they were all polite enough to write back knocking me back.

"Then I thought long and hard about it.

"Once I had a screenplay I was happy with, I then turned my mind as to how best to make this damn film. How do you make a movie on the Camino and make it real? Make it authentic? Not make it some Hollywood star-driven artificial confection.

"I've known Chris Haywood for 40 years and we're mates.

"I decided the only way to tell my story truthfully was to shoot with a very small crew and use the real pilgrims I'd walked with 10 years earlier. I'd stayed in touch with them - we'd become lifelong friends - and so they agreed to come on board this crazy adventure.

"I wanted to be small enough and nimble enough to work within the ebb and flow of the Camino. To become invisible. Only by doing that could I, as a filmmaker, respond to light, to shifts in weather, to the pulsating electric current that is the Camino."

The Way, My Way is the charming and captivating true story of a stubborn and amusingly self-centred Australian man (Bill) who decides to walk the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route through Spain.

He doesn't know why he's doing it, but one step at a time it will change him and his outlook on life forever.

"It changed my life forever," Bill said. "It humbled me for starters.

"It's all about humility and gratefulness. You are grateful for everything, for someone giving you a cold drink at the end of a very hot 25 kilometre trek.

"After years of travelling comfortably, I suddenly had to work out how to pack a backpack.

"I took a cheap plastic razor with one blade. I'm used to using a metal razor with four blades and an aloe vera strip but that was too heavy.

"The Camino taught me you cannot be burdened by anything."

Joining Bill on the project was his wife, actress Jennifer Cluff along with Camino elder statesman Johnnie Walker who said it was the most authentic film ever made about the Camino.

Johnnie Walker is widely regarded as the world's leading authority on all aspects of the Camino de Santiago, with 54 Caminos completed and 19 books on The Way to his name, no one knows the trail or has more fascinating stories about it than he does.

Before discovering his passion for The Camino, Johnnie was the founder of the Scottish Foundation for Economic Development, has served as the Chief of Staff to the First Minister of Scotland and was an adviser to the British Retail Consortium, the Commission for Racial Equality and was Chairman of the Board of Management of the International Futures Forum.

Now retired he lives, plays the organ and works with arriving pilgrims in Santiago de Compostela.

The Camino de Santiago is renowned throughout the world and is a network of paths that lead to the tomb of St James in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, in the northwest of Spain. It has become a spiritual experience for many of those that make the journey - around 6 million people a year walk at least some of the Camino, with a significant annual growth rate expected in the years to come.