Megadoc
Mike Figgis
Director Mike Figgis followed the filming of Francis Ford Coppolas’s latest work Megalopolis in Atlanta – a perhaps overly ambitioned project that deliberately shows off its artificiality. The high production cost of $120 Million was not covered by a studio, but by Coppola himself through the selling of several vineyards. Megadoc is nothing like a typical Making-of documentary, in which everyone involved reassures each other with mutual respect. Figgis, himself a heavy-weight director (Leaving Las Vegas) and a pioneer of digital film-making, explores the conflicts that arose during the production, such as the seemingly endless rehearsals and the clashing of ideas between the director and actors. The documentary also reveals an overwhelmed and thoroughly vulnerable Coppola, along with some of the constraints that Figgis faced. He highlights the enormous effort behind the film and Coppola’s distinct team-oriented style of working. As the archive footage of rehearsals suggests, Coppola had been trying to realise his vision for a good quarter of a century. This is Cinema Verité behind the scenes of the dream factory.
3 May 2026
18:00 h, Kino des DFF
More information
| Direction | Mike Figgis |
| Country | USA |
| Production year | 2025 |
| Duration | 107 min |
| Language | English |
| Language Version | OV with German Subs |
| Genre | Documentation, Documentary |
| Production | Tara Li-An, James Mockoski |
| Production company | Red Mullet, American Zoetrope |
| Distribution | Red Mullet |
| Director of Photography | Mike Figgis |
| Montage | Joe Beshenkovsky, Mike Figgis, Derrick Scocchera |
| Sound | Jim McKee, Nigel Heath |
| Music | Mike Figgis |
Venice Film Festival 2025
Presented by:
About the Director
Mike Figgis, born on February 28th, 1948, is among the most prolific and innovative filmmakers in Great Britain. Figgis began his career as a musician and founded his own multimedia-group in the late 1970s. In 1988, he made his featured film debut with Stormy Monday, starring the musician Sting. In the USA, he directed two films with Richard Gere: Internal Affairs (1990) and Mr. Jones (1993). However, his most successful film is considered to be Leaving Las Vegas (1995) – a portrait of a writer who drank himself to death. Hotel (2001) was an experimental comedy film with a sensational All-Star-Cast. One of his last works was the documentary Ronnie Wood: Somebody Up There likes Me (2019) about the guitarist from the Rolling Stones.
Press Reviews:
"Figgis also shows some rows, including endless arguments with the insufferably difficult Shia LaBeouf, but there are interesting and more relaxed and genial interviews with Jon Voight, Aubrey Plaza and Dustin Hoffman [...] I still can’t be convinced that Megalopolis is anything other than an (honourable) failure. But Figgis’s documentary is an absorbing success." (The Guardian)
"Megadoc doesn’t set out to reframe Megalopolis as a misunderstood masterpiece. Rather, it seeks to capture the optimism of Coppola’s ideas, the conflicts that emerged throughout the film’s making, and the compromises that had to be made to bring it to fruition." (Slant Magazine)
GERMAN PREMIERE
International Feature Film Program
