Last night, Sofia Coppola—the Academy Award-winning writer and director of films such as Somewhere (2010) and Lost in Translation (2003)—made history by becoming the second ever woman to win the coveted Best Director Award at the esteemed Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'or, a distinction she claimed for her film The Beguiled. She was also the first female director to win the award since 1961, when Yuliya Solntseva won for The Chronicle of Flaming Years.
Coppola is a chip off the old block: her father is acclaimed film director Francis Ford Coppola, the colossus behind classics such as The Godfather films and Apocalypse Now (1979). Sofia, in fact, first appeared in The Godfather: she is the baby in the iconic baptism scene.
The Beguiled, starring Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, and Elle Fanning, centers on a Union soldier who finds himself in an all-girls school sympathetic to the Confederacy. It received generally favourable reviews.
Check-out Al Bawaba's rundown of the Palme d'Or entrees and winners and join our excitement for some of the year's best movies.
