Making Marie Antoinette — NYFF Review

In 2005, Eleanor Coppola shot nearly 80 hours of footage on the set of her daughter Sofia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette. According to her journal, Eleanor always intended to return to the material and assemble it into her own “look behind-the-scenes at the exquisite beauty created to realize the movie.” During lockdown in 2020, the mother-daughter duo began going through the footage together. Unfortunately, Eleanor passed away in 2024, but Sofia and her team continued working on the film and completed it in her memory. The result is more than a mere behind-the-scenes look at an extravagant film production. Seen through Eleanor’s eyes, the footage feels deeply personal. It documents not only how a movie was made, but also a mother proudly watching her daughter work and create. What emerges is an unexpectedly moving portrait of the relationship between mother and daughter, woven into the beauty and excess of Marie Antoinette itself.