Director Sofia Coppola, only the second woman to ever win Best Director at Cannes was honored at the IFP Gotham Independent Film Awards on Monday, November 27 in New York. Her latest film, The Beguiled (read FF2 Media’s review of the film) was featured in a tribute video airing at the ceremony; Beguiled lead actress Nicole Kidman was also honored.
Strong female protagonists are featured, including characters from The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette, Lost in Translation and Somewhere. FF2 Media has extensively covered Coppola’s work throughout the last decade. The following is an excerpt from Editor-in-Chief Jan Lisa Huttner’s 2013 review of Coppola’s film, The Bling Ring.
My immersion in the world of The Bling Ring leads me to see Sofia Coppola’s new film as the culmination of a body of work that will help us understand our world better, but only if we give Coppola the credit she deserves and take her seriously as an accomplished filmmaker speaking out on important issues. As someone who grew up with all the privileges, Coppola is now a mature artist in her own right, and one of the few individuals capable of making us stop and take stock of where we are before we all plunge headlong, like lemmings, over a virtual, cyberspace cliff.
Sofia Coppola, who is a member of the 1%, has lived a very public life on camera, so we may know a great many facts about her life, just as we do all the other celebrities who populate The Bling Ring, but that does not mean we should draw any conclusions about her as a person. That said, I’m going to go out on a limb now…
When she made The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola was an ingénue, a “Hollywood princess,” and the daughter of a very famous father. Today she is not only an Oscar-winning filmmaker, but the mother of two daughters: Romy (born in 2006) and Cosima (born in 2010). Watching The Bling Ring, I heard the Cri de Coeur of a mother worried about what the world will be like for her own daughters as they grow into adulthood. And if I heard right, then more power to her!
To read more FF2 Media coverage on Sofia Coppola, click HERE.
© Brigid K. Presecky (11/28/17) FF2 Media
Photos: Sofia Coppola (Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock) & Coppola with the cast of The Bling Ring (A24 Films)