Sofia Coppola brings her mother's Marie Antoinette story to London

Sofia Coppola said the success of Lost in Translation gave her a free pass to make Marie Antoinette as a big, expensive period film.

She was speaking at London's Royal Festival Hall during the 70th BFI London Film Festival, in conversation with broadcaster Edith Bowman, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter on 9 October 2026. The session centred on Making Marie Antoinette, the behind-the-scenes documentary directed by her mother, Eleanor Coppola.

Coppola's Marie Antoinette was released in 2006 and starred Kirsten Dunst in the title role. Coppola shot the film at the Palace of Versailles, working from Antonia Fraser's 2001 biography Marie Antoinette: The Journey.

Eleanor Coppola filmed more than 80 hours of footage on that set. The material stayed in the family archive for years.

Sofia Coppola assembled the new documentary with editor Aaron Matthews, with input from her mother's close friends. She called the process a gift. She could see the set through her mother's eyes, and see her mother watching her as a young director, a feeling she said has sharpened now that she has almost-grown daughters of her own.

Eleanor Coppola, who had Sofia in 1971 with film-maker Francis Ford Coppola, had long filmed family life on camera. She made a short about the making of The Virgin Suicides in 1998 and another about the making of Marie Antoinette in 2007.

The feature version is described as an intimate, fly-on-the-wall record, shot by an observer who does not interfere. It was Eleanor Coppola's final film, completed after her death in 2024. Worldwide rights, the right to release the film in cinemas and on streaming around the world, were taken by MUBI, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter in July 2026.

The London screening comes as the 2006 film returns to public view. A new exhibition at Versailles pays tribute to Coppola's Marie Antoinette twenty years after its release, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The film itself is back on the big screen in a new 4K digital restoration, a high-resolution rebuild from the original picture, and a companion hardback titled Making Marie Antoinette collects behind-the-scenes photographs and an oral history of the shoot.

What makes this stand out is the double view. For fans, this means a familiar palace story seen from the sidelines, through a mother's camera. It is a production record and a family record at once.