On the morning of March 28, an unusual ballet of black limos lined up in front of the Universal City theme park in Los Angeles. Guests headed for the IMAX theater of the AMC multiplex, the best in town. Phones were confiscated. The Hollywood elite took their seats and waited patiently for the screening of Francis Ford Coppola's new film, Megalopolis, to begin.

Part of the filmmaker's clan was present: his son Roman, his nephew Nicolas Cage, his sister Talia Shire, his former son-in-law Spike Jonze, but also actors and directors Al Pacino, Anjelica Huston, Andy Garcia, Jon Favreau, Darren Aronofsky, and even 98-year-old filmmaker and producer Roger Corman, who helped Coppola edit Dementia 13, his first feature film, in 1963. (Corman died on May 9.)

"It was wild to see all these VIPs at 10 am in a multiplex without cell phones, so with nothing to do but talk to each other," said one of the few journalists invited to the screening, who preferred to remain anonymous. "Not many people have the power to take [Netflix CEO] Ted Sarandos' phone away from him."

But the purpose of the screening wasn't just friendly. "Coppola spent a lot of his personal money on this film," said the journalist. "Now he needs a partner to distribute it widely, in the hope of recouping his investment. So, he's invited everyone at once." The stakes are all the greater, given that Coppola has been working on this project for 40 years. It was a project that was shrouded in mystery. And many could not believe their ears when it was announced that the film had been selected for competition at Cannes.

References to ancient Rome

The American director, in the running for his third Palme d'Or, 45 years after Apocalypse Now and 50 years after The Conversation, had a document handed out at the entrance to the theater: "As you've already heard from me: 'I believe in America'," he wrote. Then he makes a cryptic detour into history: "Our founders borrowed a Constitution, Roman Law and Senate for their revolutionary government without a king. American history could neither have taken place nor succeeded as it has without classical learning to guide it." It's hard to be sure what the filmmaker meant without having seen the film, but a few elements that have filtered through mean we can take a guess.

Set in a city resembling New York destroyed by a disaster, the film portrays the opposition between Caesar (Adam Driver), an idealistic architect who proposes building a utopia with renewable materials, and Mayor Frank Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who defends a renovation based on concrete and corruption. Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) is stuck between the two, as the lover of the former and daughter of the latter. The first names of these three main characters are references to ancient Rome: Caesar the dictator, Cicero the philosopher and politician, and Julia, the depraved daughter of Emperor Augustus; a metaphor for America's future. A metaphor for America, that other empire.

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