Making Marie Antoinette

Making Marie Antoinette is a documentary built from eighty hours of footage shot in 2005 by Eleanor Coppola while she watched her daughter Sofia direct Marie Antoinette at the Palace of Versailles, the first production ever granted access there. Eleanor Coppola filmed the landmark production, Milena Canonero's costume work, and what it took for Sofia to direct at 34 under her mother's gaze. The footage went unseen for two decades, until, in fulfillment of her mother's wish, it became a film of its own, released as a tribute from Sofia and Roman Coppola. It works both as a behind-the-scenes look at an ambitious take on 18th-century French history and as a touching mother's observation of her daughter at work.