Twenty years after Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” premiered, the long-awaited documentary chronicling the making of the film is finally headed to audiences.
MUBI has acquired worldwide rights to “Making Marie Antoinette,” a documentary directed by the late Eleanor Coppola and produced by Sofia Coppola. The film is built around roughly 80 hours of behind-the-scenes footage Eleanor shot during the 2005 production of “Marie Antoinette,” which starred Kirsten Dunst and Jason Schwartzman and famously became the first feature film granted permission to shoot inside the Palace of Versailles.
Originally intended as one of Eleanor Coppola’s own documentaries, the project was revisited during the COVID lockdowns, when Sofia Coppola and her mother began sorting through the archival material together. Following Eleanor’s death in 2024, Sofia completed the documentary to fulfill her mother’s wish of turning the footage into a feature-length film.
According to the official synopsis, the documentary captures not only the making of the Oscar-winning historical drama—including legendary costume designer Milena Canonero at work—but also offers a portrait of Sofia Coppola navigating one of the most ambitious productions of her career as a young female filmmaker. The film also becomes an intimate family story, viewed through the eyes of a mother documenting her daughter’s creative journey.
Academy Award nominee Diane Lane provides the voice of Eleanor Coppola, reading excerpts from the filmmaker’s journals reflecting on the production and her relationship with Sofia.
“My mother and I started going through her footage during lockdown,” Sofia Coppola said in a statement. “It was always her wish to make what she shot into a feature length documentary. She was on set as a filmmaker and also my mother, so I found it so moving to go back through the material and to see our shoot through her eyes. I’m so grateful to Lorenzo and OUR FILMS for helping me put this together, and couldn’t be happier that Efe and MUBI are going to be releasing it.”
MUBI founder and CEO Efe Cakarel called “Marie Antoinette” “bold, beautiful, irreverent and hugely influential,” adding that revisiting it through Eleanor Coppola’s perspective “as both a filmmaker and a mother, is incredibly moving.”
Producer Lorenzo Mieli also praised Eleanor Coppola’s legacy as a documentarian, pointing to her landmark “Hearts of Darkness” and saying the mother-daughter dynamic gives the new film particular emotional depth.
The documentary was produced by Sofia Coppola alongside Lorenzo Mieli, Mario Gianani, Rachel Dengiz, and Youree Henley. The footage was edited by Aaron Matthews, with input from Eleanor Coppola’s longtime friends Davia Nelson and Liz Bird. The project was financed by OUR FILMS (a Mediawan company), Mediawan Rights, and Entourage Pictures.
MUBI says release plans for “Making Marie Antoinette” will be announced at a later date.
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
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