Eleanor Coppola's Final Documentary 'Making Marie Antoinette' Heads to Theatres and MUBI This October
A mother filmed her daughter at work at Versailles — and did not live to see the finished cut. Making Marie Antoinette, a nearly 90-minute documentary by Eleanor Coppola about the making of Sofia Coppola's 2006 film Marie Antoinette, screened at the Telluride Film Festival ahead of a theatrical and streaming release on 23 October through MUBI.
MUBI acquired worldwide rights to the documentary in July, according to The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. The distributor will release the film in theatres on Friday, 23 October, and make it available to stream on MUBI the same day, per IndieWire.
Eleanor Coppola began the project roughly four years before her death in 2024 and died two years before the cut was finished, according to Deadline. She kept extensive notes that candidly recorded her insecurities about being a woman with a movie camera. The documentary is voiced by actress Diane Lane.
The 2006 film it chronicles was Sofia Coppola's third feature, made on a budget of $40 million and shot on location at the Château of Versailles. Kirsten Dunst starred as the title character, a young woman thrust into the public eye. The documentary was filmed on that same Versailles location, capturing the production from the inside.
Telluride's official lineup lists Making Marie Antoinette as a 2026 Italy/U.S. production directed by Eleanor Coppola, per the festival's news page.
What gives the film its weight is the family portrait at its centre. IndieWire, reviewing the Telluride screening, described it as Eleanor Coppola's tender chronicle of her daughter shooting the 2006 biopic that also doubles as a wistful self-portrait. The Hollywood Reporter framed it as a behind-the-scenes account of Sofia Coppola directing Dunst in the period drama.
Eleanor Coppola was no stranger to the form. Her earlier documentary work on a Coppola family film set — Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, about the production of her husband Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now — set the template for on-set chronicles that double as portraits of the film-maker behind the camera.
Making Marie Antoinette arrives in theatres and on MUBI on 23 October.
