Twenty years ago, Sofia Coppola upped the ante as a director with her lush, seductive, freshly spirited take on Marie Antonette. The film’s themes of desire, decadence, isolation, and rebellion have become her hallmark in projects that explore crises wrought within gilded cages, from the celeb-fixated thieving teens of The Bling Ring (2013) to the lot of the rock star wife in Priscilla (2024). Now she’s marking the anniversary of Marie Antoinette (2006) with an exhibition at the Petit Trianon in Versailles, the release of her late mother, Eleanor Coppola’s documentary, Making Marie Antoinette (2026), and a book of the same name, featuring Andrew Durham’s on set photography. Art Basel sat down with the auteur and art collector for a quick chat about revisiting her own past, how artists have shaped her aesthetic, and where to eat breakfast in Paris.

Things take shape in retrospect

‘I visited the Petit Trianon when we were first thinking about making Marie Antoinette and how to approach it. To then have the doors opened to us and film there was amazing. So much work went into the movie, but when we were actually filming, it was just a scramble to get it all done. So, I’m really excited to be able to stand back now, 20 years later, and look closely at all the details – Milena Canonero’s costumes [which won an Academy Award], the sets, Thierry Boutemy’s flowers, the sketches for the food – and appreciate the work of all these artisans and how everyone came together; how movies are made still feels like magic to me.

Trust your instincts (and your mom)

‘Finding my mom’s on-set footage [from Marie Antoinette] after all these years, and seeing through her eyes what we were making, and myself as a young filmmaker, is so moving. My mom always loved contemporary art and took us to exhibits all the time when we were kids. She had really good instincts, and that informed me as a young person. She also encouraged me to collect photography; I have photographs by Lee Friedlander and Luigi Ghirri, a Tracey Emin drawing, an Elizabeth Peyton painting, and a Richard Prince ‘Cowboy’ that I love. I also have one of Larry Sultan’s big prints from his porn series ‘The Valley’, but it’s not up now because, having daughters, it feels weird to have a huge porn actress on the wall. But I love his work.

It all started with a photograph

‘I always draw from photography; it’s an important source for me when I’m starting to articulate an idea and show my team what I have in mind. The Guy Bourdin photo that inspired the movie’s opening shot – Untitled, for Charles Jourdan, Fall (1977) – will be in the exhibition in Versailles. The image just struck me; there’s something about the decadence of that photo that felt very Marie Antoinette. I’ve always been a visual person, and learning about other artists is so important to me. I think that anytime you see something stimulating, it gives you ideas that you can bring into your own work.

She wanted to be a painter

‘I studied fine art at CalArts in LA because I wanted to be a painter, but I was frustrated because I couldn’t really express myself through painting. I also studied photography and art history. Then, when I made a short film, I felt as if I could pull all these elements together and truly express something. Recently, I was talking to Lisa Yuskavage about her work, and I could totally relate to what she was saying: I think we’re both trying to create a feeling or an attitude.

Emotion matters more than accuracy

‘In Marie Antoinette, we were trying to find a balance [between accuracy and authenticity]; we weren’t making a documentary – emotion was more important. I wanted the film to feel like we were in that period, but not be confined to it. For me, it was exciting to use contemporary photography mixed with Milena’s costume references from drawings and paintings of the era. I was looking at history in a fresh way that could be relatable and not just like in a standard period drama.