(Eleanor Coppola, 2026, USA,
86 minutes)
One of the greatest gifts a son or daughter can give a parent is to finish the work they started before their death. It's what most of us would hope for, but not all of us have children.
When Russian filmmaker Aleksei German died before completing post-production on 2013's Hard to Be a God, Aleksei German, Jr. stepped in to finish his work, resulting in one of German's most influential films. I can't imagine Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse without its aesthetic inspiration.
More recently, David Greaves reached back further in time to finish the documentary, Once Upon a Time in Harlem, his father William Greaves shot at Duke Ellington's home in 1972. The 2026 release would also result in one of the Symbiopsychotaxiplasm director's most acclaimed films, playing major film festivals throughout the year (it's currently playing Portland's Cinema 21 and comes to Olympia's Capitol Theater in November).
Similarly, Eleanor Coppola, co-director of 1991's Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, was working on editing material she shot on the set of Marie Antoinette in 2005 when she died in 2024. The documentary, completed by her daughter Sofia and editor Aaron Matthews, has also played major film festivals since its premiere at Telluride in September. It's been such a hot ticket, in fact, that I couldn't get into either of the sold-out screenings for which I waited in line at this year's London Film Festival.
As with most things Coppola, though, the situation is more complicated or at least more self-referential than it appears, because 2026 also marks the 20th anniversary of Sofia's sumptuous, anachronistic portrait of the infamous French queen, which Sony and Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope re-released starting on October 23, to be followed by a Criterion Collection edition on November 10.
Though Eleanor started working with Francis as an assistant art director in 1962 before marrying him the following year, she didn't forge her own career as a documentarian until nearly 30 years later, and after raising three kids, but she was overshadowed first by her husband and then by her daughter. She took great pride in their work, but as Making Marie Antoinette proves, there was some jealousy and regret, too.
In 2026, her final documentary could be seen as an elaborate promotional video for her daughter's most expensive film--$67mil in today's dollars--but that would leave her overshadowed yet again. Fortunately, it's more than that and yet, at the same time, it's exactly that, only in the best of ways.
Starting with Hearts of Darkness, made with Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper, Eleanor has documented her family's work several times over, since she's also made films about Sofia and Roman's directorial debuts, The Virgin Suicides and CQ, in addition to Francis's underrated John Grisham adaptation, The Rainmaker.
Except for the first, these films aren't easy to find and were probably intended primarily for promotional purposes.
It's possible that Eleanor spent 57 days in Versailles shooting 80 hours of footage for the same reason, but the end result transcends that description. And if two months in France sounds like a lot, it's nothing compared to the 238 turbulent days she spent with Francis and the kids in the Philippines while he was making 1979's brilliant, if disaster-plagued Apocalypse Now.
It was during Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 that Eleanor and Sofia decided to assemble her material into a documentary feature, so it was always going to be a mother-daughter project.
I'm not certain whether Eleanor intended to provide the voiceover, as she did with Hearts of Darkness, but Sofia's masterstroke--which was also a total Coppola move--was to reach out to Eleanor's friend Diane Lane, who starred in four of Francis's films, to read passages from her journals. The choice couldn't be more perfect, since Lane, who is practically an extended family member, sounds a lot like her.
Through the actress's readings, Eleanor's perspective remains front and center, even as she speaks with Sofia, Kirsten Dunst (Marie Antoinette), Marianne Faithfull (Empress Maria Theresa), Sofia's cousin Jason Schwartzman (Louis XVI), and other participants. As Sofia, who is nine years his senior, quips about Jason, "I pushed him in a stroller when he was two."
As her mother explains, "I just let my camera roll in the areas that interested me." Eleanor, who turned 69 in 2005, admits that she found the camera work tiring, but it was clearly of vital importance to a woman who often felt her "creative self pushed to the last place on my to-do list," adding, "I was surprised at the passion I felt for my camera."
Even those who haven't seen Marie Antoinette are likely to find it fascinating to see how the film was put together, from the towering wigs to the New Romantic makeup to Oscar winner Milena Canonero's stunning outfits, including 72 dresses for the Queen, to the enticing food (all real) to the gorgeous flowers (also real).
No expense was spared, and yet Sofia aimed to finish on time and on budget, and she did, even as some things went wrong, like illness on set and an outdoor sequence complicated by heavy rain.
That said, Eleanor also honors Sofia's perspective. On set, her daughter appears "too small," and yet her mother admires the way she maintains her calm demeanor, even as more experienced collaborators, like cinematographer Lance Acord, who shot Lost in Translation, encourage her to incorporate a male perspective, a pretty significant misreading of the title. As Eleanor puts it, "She has the belief in her vision to forge ahead."
Her family, for the most part, stays out of her way. Aside from Jason and Francis, the executive producer, other relatives on set include Roman, the second unit director, and Sofia's niece, Gia Coppola, who directed 2024's study of motherhood and aging The Last Showgirl with Pamela Anderson.
Watching Sofia with Roman, Eleanor describes their relationship as "one of the most profound treasures in my life." Though Roman has worked on several of his sister's films, he's become best known, since 2007's The Darjeeling Limited, as Wes Anderson's closest collaborator.
At times Eleanor gets confessional in ways that don't directly involve the film as when she remembers Sofia rejecting her during her adolescence. There's something ironic about that as Sofia would go on to make several films involving teenagers, including Marie Antoinette, since the Austrian archduchess was only 15 when she married the French dauphin Louis-Auguste, and Sofia infuses the film with what she terms an "irreverent teenage quality" as the teen queen parties like a Beverly Hills club kid.
Long before the making of the film, Sofia stopped rejecting her mother. When she mentioned her while accepting the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Lost in Translation in 2004, "Thanks to my mom for always encouraging us to try to make art," Eleanor recalls bursting into tears.
And what goes around comes around, since Sofia's 19-year-old daughter, singer/actress Romy Mars, put her mom on blast in a now-deleted 2023 TikTok video for discouraging her from using social media and grounding her after she tried to charter a helicopter from NYC to Maryland with her father's credit card.
There's a moment in Making Marie Antoinette when Sofia introduces her boyfriend, Thomas Mars, lead singer of the Versailles band Phoenix, to her mother (the quartet also appears in the film). Sofia had worked with him on the soundtrack to The Virgin Suicides, but this appears to have been Eleanor's first time, and it isn't a small thing: he and Sofia married six years later, and they're still married.
As advertised, Eleanor's documentary provides a thorough account of the making of her daughter's film, but it's also revealing about Sofia, Eleanor, and their relationship. The documentarian grew up in a different era, and felt that her career was largely, though not completely, over once she had three kids, but she envies the fact that Sofia wouldn't have to feel that way, and it doesn't seem like she has, since she's made nine features, including a recent profile of designer Marc Jacobs, all while raising Romy and Cosima.
A self-described shy person, Eleanor states, "I am an observer at heart--the miniature world in my viewfinder is constantly fascinating to me." Though she had no interest in fame, she found nothing more glorious than spending a day "illuminating the stage in front of me." She spent 57 of those days on the set of Marie Antoinette, and the results are glorious indeed.
Making Marie Antoinette and Marie Antoinette in a new 4K restoration play SIFF Film Center Nov 1 via Grand Illusion Cinema. Images: the IMDb (Sofia Coppola and Kirsten Dunst), Lionsgate / Elements of Madness (Eleanor Coppola), Mubi / Variety (Dunst with Jason Schwartzman), and Andrew Durham / Important Flowers / Vogue and Variety (Sophia and Eleanor).
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