The AFI Board of Trustees announced today that Francis Ford Coppola will be the 50th recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award, America’s highest honor for a career in film. The award will be presented to Coppola at a Gala Tribute at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on April 26, 2025.
“Francis Ford Coppola is a peerless artist – one who has created seminal works in the canon of American film, and has also inspired generations of filmmakers who now embody his artistry and his independent spirit,” said Kathleen Kennedy, Chair of the AFI Board of Trustees. “AFI is honored to present him with the 50th AFI Life Achievement Award.”
Coppola’s THE GODFATHER, THE GODFATHER PART II and APOCALYPSE NOW are ranked among history’s greatest films in AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies list. He is one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of our time; a six-time Academy Award®-winning (including the Board of Governors’ Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award) director, writer and producer of such films as PATTON, THE GODFATHER TRILOGY, AMERICAN GRAFFITI, THE CONVERSATION, APOCALYPSE NOW, THE OUTSIDERS, BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA and his latest epic, MEGALOPOLIS.
As the co-founder of American Zoetrope with George Lucas, Coppola initiated and nourished the careers of talents such as Carroll Ballard, John Milius, Sofia Coppola, and actors Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, James Caan, Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfus, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall, Matt Dillon and Diane Lane. As a writer, director, producer and technological pioneer, he created a body of work that has helped shape contemporary American cinema. Coppola’s latest film MEGALOPOLIS is a Roman epic set in modern times with an all-star cast including Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne and Aubrey Plaza. This year, the film made its world premiere to a 10-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, and was released theatrically and in IMAX globally earlier this fall.
The AFI Life Achievement Award Tribute special will return for its 10th year with Turner Broadcasting to air on TNT, followed by encore presentations on Turner Classic Movies (TCM).
The American Film Institute is a nonprofit organization with a mandate to champion the moving image as an art form. All proceeds from the 50th AFI Life Achievement Award Tribute Gala support AFI’s education and arts initiatives. Learn more about AFI at AFI.com.
AFI Life Achievement Award Recipients
The 50th AFI Life Achievement Award Honoree joins an esteemed group of individuals who have been chosen for this distinguished honor since its inception.
Max and Janet Fraley
Great selection that from my perspective is long overdue when I look at the listing of previous recipients. I don’t know why this oversight, but I believe withj the significance of the honor then the selection process does need looking into.
Wilkie and Becky Cheong
I concur totally
Kathy Young
Much deserved and way,way overdue! Congratulations to the great Francis Ford Coppola.
Regina René Lines
My first film as a tween actor was One From the Heart, directed by Mr Coppola. I am still in filmmaking today as a Producer because of the kindness he showed, the film magic he made and the family type environment he created on set. I remember being mesmerized by the entire filming process. He rode me on his bicycle around Zoetrope Studios and said I reminded him of his daughter, Sofia. He is extraordinary and I feel blessed to have worked with him.
Toni Webb
Coppola is a giant in the film industry. Congratulations, a long overdue honor.
Cinnamon West
GREAT WORK Mr. Coppola.
frank murphy
My first thought was this great visionary was receiving his second award because of his Outre to Film.
When I see some of those who received this highest recognition,and were directed or produced by him I wonder about the selection process.Anyway the A-listers will be beating each other up to get to lavish praise upon the Great Man. Kindly Frank M
Shane Charles Sourgose
Francis Ford Coppola has always been an inspiration, and a level of storytelling I hope to be, one day… congratulations, you deserve it Mr. Coppola. 🙏🏻
Shane Charles Sourgose
Francis Ford Coppola is such an inspiration, and a level of storytelling I hope to be, one day… congratulations Mr. Coppola, you deserve everything. 🙏🏻
Eric Hougland
I would have thought that the AFI had long ago recognized Francis Ford Coppola with this honor. Congratulations, sir!
John Scheinman
If “Megalopolis” is his capstone, it is the wondrous, mad, perfect finish to a monumental career. Not enough is made of how Coppola is a master of steely precision (“The Godfather” films) and flights of grand, tightrope-walking invention (pick your favorite). Deserving doesn’t begin to describe his worthiness for this grand honor. He is a Hollywood immortal.
Max Fraley
AMEN; HE IS MOST DESERVING!
Massimo Zeri
A milestone artist in the Motion Picture Industry
Max Hubmann
What a deserving recipient for the AFI life Achievement award. I watch “The Godfather” with my grandfather every year at Christmas. God bless Mr. Ford Coppola.
Max Hubmann
What a deserving recipient for the AFI life achievement award. I watch the Godfather every year at Christmas with my grandfather. God bless Francis Ford Coppola.
Peter Myette
Megalopolis flashes with the declarative directness, self-importance, and stylistic overabundance of a whizz kid. Yet it was made by Francis Ford Coppola, an octogenarian wunderkind, who knows as much about the art of directing pictures as anyone who has ever lived. The movie is a curated ultraviolet trip to a place of wonder and awesome views, futuristic but with a downtown wash. Stunning shots and sensational scenes gift us an uplift of discovery. It’s a work of scope and dimension rarely achieved in personal filmmaking.
Below the fantastical surface, the film’s straightforward storyline is a mashup of urban noir beats—desire and deceit, grand schemes and ties that bind, double crosses and empty promises—a mindful melodrama that immerses the viewer in the expressionist milieu of the moment, syncopated sidetracks included.
Then there are the fabulist takes on stopping the clock—effectively imposing freeze frames—a spin off the metaphor that tech moguls and movie directors capture “pieces of time” in creating a gazillion gigabytes of data and dozens of feature films, respectively.
In contrast to reports of improvisation off the cuff, the movie displays the fruits of improv nurtured within a coherent scheme. Coppola was sufficiently confident—having held iterations of the story in his head for decades—and the cast brave enough, to test varied approaches to scenes, unafraid of going too far out.
Driver’s phantasmic phenom lets the word go forth in fervently selling his blueprints for fulfilling the future, just as Coppola delivers the essential goods through the imagery of his storytelling. He applies composition, framing, astute angles, camera movement, lighting, and editing in an unrelenting flow of imagination to put over the narrative—the work of a visual artist extraordinaire. That is his legacy.
Ross Moor
Hmmmm. After Megalopolis I’d take him out of the running…
Robert Caprio
Having looked over the list of previous AFI honorees, the board and its members should be ashamed of themselves for waiting so long. Mr. Coppola is a pioneer filmmaker and a multiple Oscar winner. He deserved this honor along time ago. This announcement is an embarrassment.
A.L. Hern
I cannot think of a more worthy LIVING recipient for the honor (it’s shameful how many worthies AFI ignored while they were alive, their only shorcomings being that the careers they chose in life were other than director or actor, but AFI’s ALWAYS chased TV ratings).
I’ve said to AFI Chair Bob Gazzale, and used to tell former AFI CAFS Director Jean Firstenberg that they should take one minute in each broadcast — ONE MINUTE — to bestow several POSTHUMOUS awards, but do they ever listen?
Just one more thing, re Coppola: STOP crediting him with having written the script to “Patton” solo — it was co-written by Edmund H. North, who was the one to find the soine of the story that Coppola missed in his drafts.
General Public Users, Do not delete
I am so delighted to come and seal my fabulous LA Zoetroper veteran filmmakers from HAMMET, ONE FROM THE HEART, THE ESCAPE ARTIST, THE OUTSIDERS, RUMBLE FISH, COTTON CLUB, PEGGY SUE, TUCKER and NEW YORK STORIES. And the great shows on “that Lot,”- HISTORY OF THE WORLD- where we did have Gladiators wandering the lot, THIEF, and-ha XANADU. And George Burns, driving off the lot, every day at 5pm, his head and cigar, usb barely above the steering wheel. (I digress.)