Sofia Coppola Completes Her Mother's Versailles Documentary

Sofia Coppola has completed the documentary her mother Eleanor Coppola could not finish. Making Marie Antoinette, built from 80 hours of behind-the-scenes footage Eleanor shot on a digital camera during the 57-day shoot of Coppola's 2006 Marie Antoinette at Versailles, screened at the 64th New York Film Festival. It arrives in theaters on October 23 and on MUBI on November 6.

Eleanor shelved the footage for 14 years. She and Sofia revisited it during the pandemic, hoping to shape the personal material into an archival documentary. Two years after Eleanor's death — and 20 years after the release of Marie Antoinette — editor Aaron Matthews compiled and cut the digital library into the finished film.

Eleanor was no stranger to production documentaries. Fifteen years earlier she had co-directed Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, the acclaimed 1991 film about her husband Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Yet here she approached the camera with striking self-consciousness. Diane Lane narrates Eleanor's diary entries, in which she questions her own place as a creative. "I'm basically a shy person and I hate to intrude," she says. "It's counter to my personality to shoot a documentary. And yet, over and over again, I do it."

That hesitation granted her intimate access. She quietly courts Kirsten Dunst preparing for a scene, listens to producers managing logistics, and captures unguarded moments — Jason Schwartzman fooling around with a harpsichord — that a more assertive documentarian might have missed. Certain iconic behind-the-scenes stills, including Dunst and Schwartzman peering intently at a MacBook, gain new life through her lens, filled with smalltalk, laughter, and background music.

The film details the production's craftsmanship. Costume designer Milena Canonero designed 72 unique gowns for Dunst, while every other actor and extra required period-specific clothing, makeup, and wigs cleaned and powdered daily. One assistant notes the production loses a full day each week to that prep time. Shot inside a palace that rarely grants cinematic access, the production ran on a tight budget and ruthless schedule — and, as Eleanor's footage shows, on cooperation and collaboration.

The documentary also records friction. When extras are not ready for a scene, Sofia tells someone, "It feels like I was left out of that discussion." Later, in a confrontation with her cinematographer, she takes a firmer stance on the camera's point of view staying with her protagonist: "It's not the guy's story."

The production remained a family affair. Sofia's brother Roman filmed second-unit scenes and offered another set of eyes. Her father Francis spent a few days on set and urged her to hold her ground: "Throw a Marie Antoinette party and invite everyone to it. Do it the way you want to." Eleanor's own omnipresence proved decisive — she called a doctor when Sofia's cold turned out to be bronchitis, and, during a scene between Marie and her mother, panned left to catch Sofia looking through the camera, aware of the parallel.

The filmmaking reinvigorated Eleanor's artistic life even as it made Sofia reconsider ever making such an expensive movie again. "Shouldn't I be engaged in my own creative process, not just observing the work of my talented family?" Eleanor asks in one diary entry. She answered that question ten years later, becoming the oldest woman to direct a feature debut with 2016's Paris Can Wait. Making Marie Antoinette now completes that circle, pairing the record of a young filmmaker finding her voice with the portrait of a mother claiming her own.