Sofia Coppola has an anti-violence rule for watching films — with one notable exception. The director said during a recent masterclass at the Biarritz Nouvelles Vagues Festival that she tries to steer clear of “violent” films, though she is still a fan of Martin Scorsese‘s features.
“I love Scorsese, so there are moments for it,” Coppola said, adding that “violent themes can be interesting or insinuating.” However, as a whole, Coppola herself “[doesn’t] really like violent films.”
She added, “There’s so much gun violence in my country. It’s really hard to see [those] movies. Old cowboys are cool, but just the way [violence] is overdone now is upsetting. … But really gory, not so much for me.”
Related Stories
Scorsese has no doubt has been a personal staple in Coppola’s life: Scorsese presented her father, fellow auteur Francis Ford Coppola, with the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award in 2025, and the duo have long praised each other’s work. Francis Ford Coppola took to Instagram in 2023 to call his “longtime friend” Scorsese the “world’s greatest living filmmaker” while promoting Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
“He is a wonderful person and the world’s greatest living filmmaker. His new film delivers on every level,” Francis Ford Coppola wrote at the time.
Scorsese previously called “The Godfather Part II” his favorite Francis Ford Coppola film in an opinion piece for Esquire, writing that the family drama is “constructed like a symphony and directed by a master as a great conductor directs his orchestra, it reaches its highest points of lyricism.” Coppola also deemed “Raging Bull” his favorite Scorsese movie in the same Esquire piece.
While Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola are both titans of filmmaking, especially helping to start the modern Golden Age of Hollywood, Sofia Coppola ushered in the 21st century of women auteurs. Sofia Coppola made her feature directorial debut in 2000 with “The Virgin Suicides,” and across her career, she said that she has seen a “big shift” in gender parity Hollywood for the better.
Sofia Coppola also noted at the Biarritz Nouvelles Vagues Festival that she hopes to witness more female directors find their way to the big screen. “When I was starting, there were so few of us,” she said. “It’s really exciting to see so many more women directors, so many young women directors.”
