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Francis Ford Coppola to Present MEGALOPOLIS and Receive Artistic Excellence Award at the 22nd FICM

Thanks to the support of Cinépolis Distribución, legendary American director, screenwriter, and producer, and five-time Oscar® winner, Francis Ford Coppola will present Megalopolis, his most recent film, at the 22nd Morelia International Film Festival (FICM).

In addition, the 22nd FICM will present the extraordinary filmmaker with the Artistic Excellence Award in recognition of his incomparable career, which has spanned over six decades, and his invaluable contributions to the film industry. The Artistic Excellence Award ceremony for Francis Ford Coppola will be held on Tuesday, October 22 at 7:30 p.m. at the Mariano Matamoros Theater, prior to the screening of Megalopolis. 

Megalopolis  is a Roman Epic set in an imagined modern America. The City of New Rome must change, causing conflict between Cesar Catilina, a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero, who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare. Torn between them is socialite Julia Cicero, the mayor's daughter, whose love for Cesar has divided her loyalties, forcing her to discover what she truly believes humanity deserves.

Starring Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight and Laurence Fishburne, Megalopolis began to be developed by Francis Ford Coppola in the early 1980s, when he read about the Catilinarian Conspiracy, which took place in 63 B.C. in the Roman Republic.

"I had cooked up this idea," Coppola remembered. "I very much wanted to write this story. I just started filling notebooks with ideas or things I found while reading. I thought, you know, everyone knows America is a reincarnation of Republican Rome because our founders didn't want a king but wanted it to be like Rome's republic. You can't go to New York without realizing it is covered with Roman buildings. So, my intent was to write a Roman epic set in a contemporary New York that's copied Ancient Rome."

Over the years, Francis Ford Coppola held several table reads with different actors. In 2007 he was on the verge of abandoning the project due to lack of support for its development; but his 80th birthday, followed by the pandemic, gave the director new impetus. By August 2021, he was in formal discussions with actors and beginning casting.

“My first goal always is to make a film with all my heart, so I began to realize it would be about love and loyalty in every aspect of human life. Megalopolis echoed these sentiments, in which love was expressed in almost crystalline complexity, our planet in danger and our human family almost in an act of suicide, until becoming a very optimistic film that has faith in the human being to possess the genius to heal any problem put before us,” said the filmmaker.

After its debut at the Morelia International Film Festival, Megalopolis will have its theatrical release in Mexico on Thursday, October 24th, through Cinépolis Distribución.

About the Artistic Excellence Award

The Morelia International Film Festival's Artistic Excellence Award was presented for the first time in 2018 to Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón and has since been awarded to renowned film personalities such as Robert Redford, Claire Denis, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Willem Dafoe and Jodie Foster.