Making Marie Antoinette: A touching Coppola family affair

The Irish Times · Tara Brady · 2026-11-06 05:08 UTC

Sofia Coppola completed this personal, essential documentary from her late mother Eleanor’s 80 hours of footage of the shoot for the 2006 film

There’s a moment in Making Marie Antoinette when director Sofia Coppola – one of the few women to helm a studio picture in 2006 – breaks down the titular character for star Kirsten Dunst: “They treat you like you’re just a dumb girl and you let them. But every once in a while, you let them know you’re not an idiot.” Well, quite.

Most making-of documentaries are extended promotional features, offering behind-the-scenes footage as a Blu-ray extra for diehard fans. But most making-of documentaries are not directed by the late Eleanor Coppola, who redefined the possibilities of the form with Hearts of Darkness, her unmissable account of the trials and tribulations endured by her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, during the making of Apocalypse Now.

Eleanor’s filmmaking grafted intimacy and empathy on to conventional reportage, however tumultuous the set of Apocalypse Now. Making Marie Antoinette, a much calmer affair, and assembled from her footage by Sofia after her mother’s death in 2024, offers a similarly personal, essential angle.

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