‘I had fun.’
 

PostED ON 13.10.2025

It opens with Francis Ford Coppola in a white T-shirt answering the question of how it feels to self-finance a film with a budget of $120 million: ‘I think I was scared, and that was a very good thing.’

THE SUBJECT: The inner workings of making the  film Megalopolis by Francis Ford Coppola (2024), a project the filmmaker had imagined and carried within him for decades.

THE METHOD: The documentary deploys all the possibilities of a documentary narrative, much like how Coppola makes use of all the possibilities of cinematic storytelling. We find face-to-camera interviews with figures like George Lucas, Shia LaBeouf, Aubrey Plaza, Adam Driver; rehearsals; archive footage of auditions featuring Uma Thurman, Robert De Niro, Ryan Gosling; the narrator's voice in first-person; chapters assembled like a prescription; a plethora of discussions between Coppola and the rest of the world... Tied together, it gives the audience an exhaustive understanding of the Coppola method.

BONUS: The Coppola method itself! We observe the filmmaker's obsession with technological objects, but we especially witness his uncanny ability to motivate a set, to intently listen to the actors and, in his unique way, to prod them to experiment and find the truth behind their characters, somewhere within the sprawling constellation of the film. Director Mike Figgis sums it up succinctly, explaining that Coppola is akin to a jazz musician composing with unbridled freedom. Although described as a romantic, Figgis pursues his artistic vision with the deliberate, calculated, strategic moves of a chess player, not allowing anyone to interfere. Because for him, Megalopolis is a film whose central premise is pivotal in today’s world: ‘hope’.

Virginie Apiou

MegaDoc by Mike Figgis (2025, 1h47)

Creation of the DCP with French subtitles made exclusively for the festival by Studiocanal
Our thanks to Studiocanal

Institut Lumière (Villa) Mon13 4.30pm