The Making of Marie Antoinette, Through Sofia Coppola’s Mother’s Loving Lens

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Sofia Coppola’s opulent, candy-colored coming-of-age film Marie Antoinette (2006) hypnotized young audiences, polarized critics, and rewrote the rules of biopics.

Riding the success of her first two films, The Virgin Suicides (1999) and Lost in Translation (2003), Coppola directed the $40 million historical drama with an unwavering commitment to her anachronistic vision, focusing more on the emotions of its titular protagonist (played by Kirsten Dunst) as she grappled with her newfound celebrity than on the grim politics gathering outside the French royal palace of Versailles. For the first time ever, the French government opened the palace to filming, allowing the production to spend 20 chaotic days inside its walls—more than a third of the 57-day shoot. Coppola’s mother, Eleanor, kept her video camera in hand throughout, often pointing it squarely at her daughter. She captured nearly 80 hours of footage, which Sofia has now distilled into a tender feature-length video diary, Making Marie Antoinette, opening in theaters on October 23.

Eleanor had previously captured her family’s love of filmmaking in her documentary debut, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991), which chronicled the tumultuous making of husband Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now. But she often prioritized caring for her family over pursuing her own creative projects. Her narrative directorial debut, Paris Can Wait, came in 2016, shortly after she turned 80.

Years later, during the Covid lockdowns, Sofia and Eleanor began stitching the footage together into a film. Eleanor died in 2024 before they completed the project, but Sofia finished the movie, enlisting Diane Lane to voice Eleanor’s journals. The word that best describes the tone of Making Marie Antoinette is affectionate. The tender, intimate film serves as a posthumous time capsule fueled by not only Eleanor’s love of filmmaking but also her unabashed love for her daughter.

The documentary opens in a long hallway filled with makeup designers and costumers preparing countless extras for the shoot. Eleanor slowly walks through the crowded set as Lane reads from her journals: “I’m basically a shy person, and I hate to intrude. It’s counter to my personality to shoot a documentary, but over and over, I do it. … It’s a rare opportunity to see my child at work, to be included in her world.” This opening moment shows Eleanor slinking around the colossal movie set, just out of sight, witnessing both the massive production unfolding around her and her daughter’s most daunting challenge as a director.

Filming Marie Antoinette was, to say the least, ambitious. The budgets of Sofia’s first two movies combined paled in comparison to its $40 million price tag. Within Versailles, Sofia directed hundreds of extras, all wearing glamorized period-appropriate costumes designed by Milena Canonero and six assistant designers, surrounded by intricate feasts and bountiful flower arrangements. The grueling film schedule meant long hours; Eleanor’s camera catches cast members and extras asleep throughout the royal palace.

At one point, Eleanor observes her daughter carrying the stress of the production on her shoulders, a moment that underscores the value of seeing this process through such caring eyes. Her footage doesn’t just show the logistical undertaking that was Marie Antoinette; it also champions how masterfully (and calmly) Sofia directs the production, never once wavering from her vision. Eleanor is equally attentive to the excitement and the joy of the work, from Sofia’s sense of fulfillment when filming wraps to Jason Schwartzman, who plays Louis XVI, exuberantly playing the piano while crew members review the script.

When Marie Antoinette premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006, it drew a swell of boos. Critics lambasted the movie for taking a seemingly frivolous approach to the royal court in the lead-up to the French Revolution. In the two decades since, its reputation has undergone a considerable reversal, with the film increasingly recognized as a masterpiece. Inspired largely by British author Antonia Fraser’s biography, Sofia set out to take a sympathetic view of Marie Antoinette. Instead of centering the looming political disaster, she focused on a young girl unwittingly thrust into the spotlight, subject to the country’s praise and criticism. This was a film told from the young queen’s point of view rather than that of the men who waged wars and plotted political coups.

One scene in the documentary shows how fiercely Sofia fought for this vision. While filming a party scene, Eleanor captures a disagreement between Sofia and her director of photography, Lance Acord, over whether a moment of Marie’s jealousy requires a response from Louis XVI. Acord wants to include the king’s perspective; Sofia insists the film belongs to the queen and the queen alone.

An interview Eleanor conducts with the then-24-year-old Dunst offers another way into Sofia’s affinity for her protagonist. Dunst reflects on the parallels between her own childhood and Marie’s, saying, “I have that relationship that Marie Antoinette did have, starting as a young girl and coming to these movie sets and having all these expectations, all these judgments about you.” By 12, Dunst was acting alongside Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in Interview With the Vampire. Eleanor sees a similar parallel in Sofia, who also grew up on film sets under the weight of a famous name.

Many of Eleanor’s reflections focus on the generational differences between her and her daughter and the evolution of their relationship. “Sofia’s generation is so different,” Eleanor asserts in her journals. “She and her women friends understand that marriage and family can be parts of a fulfilling life, but they also have career aspirations.” By the time she was Sofia’s age, Eleanor had already given birth to her three children, Roman, Sofia, and Gian-Carlo, and “too often [her] creative self was pushed to last place on [her] to-do list.” She reflects on how she always encouraged her children to pursue their passions yet struggled to give herself the same permission: “At my age, should I be engaged in my own creative process?”

Here lies the deeper poignancy of Making Marie Antoinette. The entire documentary reads like a love letter from Eleanor to her children. At one point, she observes her son Roman joining Sofia as the second unit director. “Their relationship is one of the most profound treasures in my life,” she writes. Witnessing her family’s creative lives, and receiving encouragement from Sofia in particular, eventually inspired Eleanor to pursue the personal project that became Paris Can Wait. In doing so, she became the oldest woman to release a narrative debut.

Twenty years after its release, Marie Antoinette remains an object of fascination, its hyperstylized world endlessly recirculated on social media. A conventional making-of documentary would have plenty to offer its devoted audience, but Making Marie Antoinette offers something far more intimate: a mother watching her daughter claim the creative freedom she had struggled to find herself. Eleanor points her camera at Sofia, proudly observing her own life’s work, even as she begins to imagine what else it might include.