Venice Film Festival: Francis Ford Coppola thrills crowd weeks after hospitalization

Francis Ford Coppola strolled onto the stage at the opening ceremony of the Venice Film Festival Wednesday evening to thunderous applause - an expression of gratitude from the crowd inside the Sala Grande for the simple fact of his being there.

The 86-year-old directing legend had given cinefiles a scare earlier in August when local media outlets in Rome reported he had been admitted to a hospital after a long-scheduled heart operation. The reports, which his representative denied, asserted that something had gone amiss, but Coppola went out of his way to calm fans’ fears. “Da Dada (what my kids call me) is fine,” he wrote on Instagram.

Da Dada sure looked like it. Just two weeks later, he showed up in Venice looking chipper and terrific. He had first surprised festivalgoers Tuesday evening, vacation-ready in a bright-yellow jacket, at a preopening screening of the restored 1929 silent movie Queen Kelly. Cue the standing ovation. As Coppola sat back down, he threw his hand over his eyes, perhaps a little teary-eyed or chuckling in disbelief - it was hard to tell, but either response would’ve been valid. (Festival jury president Alexander Payne said at the opening news conference that arriving by water taxi to sit through a silent movie next to Coppola had been his version of “heaven.” Then he dodged a question about Gaza - a fraught topic and the subject of protests at the festival - and has been the subject of headlines ever since.)

Then on opening night, there was Coppola in a tuxedo, handing a lifetime achievement award - the same that he received in 1992 - to his friend of more than half a century, Werner Herzog. (The opening-night premiere was of The Great Beauty director Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia.)

Herzog and his wife, Lena, had walked the red carpet with Coppola, assisting him on both sides as he enthusiastically greeted cheering fans, and Coppola had so much fun he circled back to greet them some more. While Coppola praised Herzog’s films in his speech, the 82-year-old German maverick went more personal, recalling how his friend had let him stay with him in San Francisco when Herzog didn’t have enough money for a hotel. It was at Coppola’s place that Herzog started writing the screenplay for his 1982 epic Fitzcarraldo - one of the most difficult, and troubled, productions ever made.

Coppola’s presence in Italy is not unusual. Just before his surgery, he was in Calabria scouting locations for a new project that he’s said is about the beauty of the region. Ever since his wife of 61 years, Eleanor, died in April 2024, he’s been on the road. He can no longer stand to be in their Napa, California, home, he told The Washington Post last year, because he sees reminders of her everywhere. So he keeps moving, as though he’s hoping mortality never finds him.

Herzog on Thursday will premiere his new documentary Ghost Elephants, about South African conservationist Steve Boyes and his Ahab-like search in the mountains of Angola for a mysterious herd of elephants. Herzog, in his typical cryptic fashion, described the film in his speech as “not so much about elephants but about the spirits of elephants, the ghosts of elephant,” and said he was excited to introduce his award - a winged lion - to the pachyderms.

Coppola, meanwhile, is the subject of Megadoc, a chronicle of the chaotic production of his 2024 opus - and spectacular box-office flop - Megalopolis. The film, which also premieres at the festival Thursday, is directed by English director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) - another old friend of Coppola. A chance email between the two led to Figgis being invited on set the first day of Megalopolis’ production so that he could document anything and everything. (Meanwhile, Coppola’s daughter Sofia is also premiering her first-ever documentary, an intimate portrait of the fashion designer Marc Jacobs.)

The reunion between Coppola and Herzog was a cheery opening act for a 10-day film festival that has become a high-stakes table-setter for Oscars season. The next days will see the world premieres of some of the most anticipated movies of the fall, such as Dwayne Johnson’s play for a best-actor statue, The Smashing Machine, and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, with Jacob Elordi as the monster. Reactions here could launch or torpedo the hopes of many - such as when Joker: Folie à Deux got battered by critics last year and immediately faded from awards contention.

Other movies getting their make-or-break launch include Bugonia, Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest collaboration with Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons (yes, another!); Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly with George Clooney; Julia Roberts vying for best actress with After the Hunt from Luca Guadagnino; Jude Law playing Vladimir Putin in The Wizard of the Kremlin; Julian Schnabel’s In the Hands of Dante; and A House of Dynamite, a nuclear war thriller that is Kathryn Bigelow’s first movie since 2017’s Detroit.

Last year, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist was Venice’s big discovery. This year, many wonder if The Testament of Ann Lee, starring Amanda Seyfried, will do the same for Corbet’s writer/director wife, Mona Fastvold.

Coppola, it seems, plans to be around for future strolls down the Lido. He had preceded his surgery with a six-city tour of Megalopolis, receiving a lifetime achievement award in Calabria and surprising an audience at New York’s Film Forum that was there to see his late wife Eleanor’s documentary Hearts of Darkness, about the making of Apocalypse Now.

“There are many people, when they die, they say: ‘Oh, I wish I had done this, I wish I had done that,’” Coppola said at one of those tour stops. “But when I die, I’m going to say: ‘I’ve got to do this, and I’ve got to see my daughter win an Oscar, and I’ve got to make wine, and I’ve got to make every movie I wanted to make.”

“And,” he continued, “I’m going to be so busy thinking of all the things that I’ve got to do that when I die, I won’t notice it.”

© 2025 , The Washington Post