Sofia Coppola Says She’s Dying to Work With Kirsten Dunst Again
By Samantha Bergson
November 13, 2025
If Sofia Coppola were to make a film about her life in 2025, she might title it Everything Everywhere All at Once. Twenty-five years after making her feature directorial debut with The Virgin Suicides, the filmmaker has premiered her first documentary, Marc by Sofia, about her longtime friend Marc Jacobs; kicked off her recurring screening series at the newly reopened West Village hub that is the Cherry Lane Theatre; launched a book tour for her late mother Eleanor Coppola’s posthumous memoir, Two of Me: Notes on Living and Leaving; and been thanked in the credits for both Celine Song’s and Kristen Stewart’s latest films. Coppola had an opportunity to take a victory lap at the Museum of Modern Art’s 17th annual Film Benefit, presented by Chanel, where she was this year’s honoree—putting Coppola in the company of past recipients and fellow auteurs Baz Luhrmann, Tim Burton, Pedro Almodóvar, Quentin Tarantino, Kathryn Bigelow, and Guillermo del Toro. “I couldn’t believe it when they asked,” Coppola told Vanity Fair shortly before the event on Wednesday. “It’s nice to pause and be like, Oh wow, I have a body of work.”
And what a body of work it is: Coppola won the Academy Award for best original screenplay with Lost in Translation and landed famed costume designer Milena Canonero an Oscar for her now cult classic Marie Antoinette. Coppola even sought to change the perception of how female filmmakers are supposed to look: “The women directors who I was growing up with were like Penny Marshall, who is cool and great, but they always dressed kind of like guys,” Coppola said. “They weren’t feminine. I always made a point [to show that] I like clothes. You don’t have to all be in polo sleeves to be a director and work a camera, but also you do have to be practical on set.”
During the Film Benefit ceremony, held November 12 at the museum, Elle Fanning, star of Coppola’s Somewhere and The Beguiled, ably summarized the director’s legacy: Coppola has forever changed how “girlhood” is depicted in film. She spoke movingly about watching Coppola’s third feature, Marie Antoinette, in theaters: “Living in that cinema—in Sofia’s world—for a few hours, it would change my girlhood forever,” the actor and Coppola muse said. “It was a place I felt safe and seen, and I wanted to live in it 100 times over. I never knew that something could look so beautiful.”
Marc by Sofia lead producer Jane Cha Cutler echoed to VF that Coppola is a revolutionary due to her keen eye. “She’s very tapped into that inner teenage girl in many of us—that in-betweenness of innocence and knowingness, the insecurity, the tenuousness, the excitement at becoming or experimenting at who you’re going to be,” Cutler said. “There’s a reason so many young people line up for Sofia’s book signings and love her films so much—they feel fresh and new, never stodgy or didactic.”
Virgin Suicides star Josh Hartnett told VF that Coppola’s cinematic style was fully formed even before she started directing. “Sofia was an artist in full from the beginning,” he said. “Working with her on that film was a formative experience for me as a young actor. She had her hands in every department, took incredible risks in her approach,” he said. “She wrote the script on spec, without the producers’ permission, just because she loved the novel. She seemingly had no fear that anything wouldn’t work out the way she envisioned it. And yet, juxtaposed against that clarity and self-belief, she fostered the most humane, creative, and collaborative set environment I’ve ever been a part of.”
Alden Ehrenreich, who has appeared in a Dior ad shot by Coppola, agreed that the filmmaker “leads with an understated, effortless command.” In turn, he told VF, her productions “feel more like intimate little hangouts than professionalized film shoots,” with the actor adding, “It’s easy to trust her because she has the greatest taste, which she seems to follow intuitively.”
Below, Coppola details how she harnessed that taste and determination—and explains why, even this far into her career, she’s still fighting for funding, pushing back against studio executives, and realizing just how deep art has to cut to be considered revolutionary.
Sofia Coppola: I love MoMA film. I love seeing films there, and that they consider film as an art medium. They have a film print of Virgin Suicides, which I got to see with my daughter in June. It was really meaningful for me to see a film print preserved and beautiful on a big screen. And then to also just be able to be there with so many people who I’ve worked with over the years, and be able to thank them—you don’t get to usually do that. It’s like having a funeral. You get to be there with them. I don’t know when in life you get to bring your work people together in that way.
Josh [Hartnett] is coming, which is really fun. And Jason [Schwartzman]. The only disappointment—I’m really bummed Kirsten [Dunst] can’t be there because she has a schedule change. She’s such an important person to me [Dunst instead sent in prerecorded well-wishes]. But I’m so thrilled to be there with Elle [Fanning] and Bill [Murray]. It’s surreal. I met Elle when she was 11, and now she’s this beautiful, grown, stylish person. And I’m really excited about the musical guest. I’m glad they’re keeping it a surprise. It’s more my generation. [It was Elvis Costello.]
I’ve been working on it this last year, kind of off and on. It’s a really fun process because it’s not the same as shooting a movie. It started because Jane and R.J. Cutler, the producers, came to Marc and said, “Would you do a documentary?” And he said, “Only if Sofia would do it.” So they came to me. When they first asked me, I was thinking, No, that’s too much pressure. It has to be good because that’s my friend. It’s Marc! And then I just kept thinking about how fun it would be to look through all those archives and really pull a portrait together. I kept resisting, and then they were like, “He’s about to start his collection,” and I was like, I’ll just go over there with a camera and just film the beginning, because I didn’t want to miss that moment. I just stopped resisting.
In the introduction for your mother’s memoir, Two of Me, you write about her work as a documentarian, even capturing behind-the-scenes details on your own sets. Did her films influence how you directed Marc by Sofia?
She definitely was the documentarian in our family. She was so good at it, so I did feel like there is a connection. She had such a great, steady camera. Mine was so not steady. I was like, Oh, this is shameful, because my mom was the best handheld-camera person. But I definitely got the observer side. Also, she collected textiles. She was really into fabric and paper. I definitely got all of these things from her, and that side that likes to watch the process. Also, to make it as personal as I can. I didn’t want to do a generic talking heads documentary. Marc is so good in front of a camera, and he was comfortable around me, so it was really a great experience.
Marc by Sofia is one of several projects you have with A24. How has your partnership with the studio evolved since The Bling Ring?
Yeah, I love those guys [at A24]. It’s so different than my experience in the traditional film studio [and] executive corporate world. It’s such a relief that they are so open to ideas. They’re just really great, smart, and easy to work with. I feel like there are resources to make things and there are people who get what I am trying to do.
Celine Song, they asked me if I would do a podcast with her, and I was like, “Sure.” It was really enjoyable and interesting to talk with her, and then she asked me to watch a cut of her film [Materialists]. I think it’s always nice to have that kind of filmmaking community.
Every publisher turned it down. And A24 was like, “We just started a division of literary books.” So that really worked out.
You’ve openly spoken about female filmmakers having to deal with more red tape than male filmmakers, even if they’re Oscar winners, like yourself. Were you surprised that Two of Me was turned down by so many publishers? Or are you used to that kind of thing by now?
No, actually it wasn’t [shocking], because I’m so used to having to push to get things made and going against the grain of what is considered “commercial.” If you’re doing something that doesn’t exist already, there’s always a [need] to push. I’m just used to pushing. Even with the MoMA [honor], I was writing a speech and I was like, Oh my God, I have a body of work. I never stop to think I have a body of work, because I’m just so busy trying to make my stuff. Each one is a challenge. But I’m just in that mode of trying to get stuff made. I think all creative people have that. You’re kind of pushing against a system; if you’re doing something comfortable, it wouldn’t be as interesting. I don’t mind it, the friction.
I have so many—original ideas, adaptations. I’m kind of all over the place…. Kirsten and I were talking about doing something, but I just kind of put everything on pause. I really want to do something with Kirsten, and there was one thing we were thinking of and figuring out. I would love to get back to making a film again.
[My daughter] Romy [Mars] showed me a TiKTok [in which] someone had recut Priscilla to Frank Ocean. It was so good. And then all these Marie Antoinette edits to hip-hop songs—it’s so fun to see my work out there. And I’m excited for next year’s 20th anniversary of Marie Antoinette. I’m trying to get a film rerelease, because there’s a whole generation who has only seen it on TikTok. To see it big in a theater would be amazing.
