Francis Ford Coppola in the context of Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award

Youth Without Youth (Romanian: Tinereţe fără tinereţe) is a 1976 novella by Romanian author Mircea Eliade. It follows the life of Dominic Matei, an elderly Romanian intellectual who experiences a cataclysmic event that allows him to live a new life with startling intellectual capacity. In 2007, it was adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola, also titled Youth Without Youth.

Cinecittà Studios (pronounced [ˌtʃinetʃitˈta]; Italian for Cinema City) is a large film studio in Rome, Italy. With an area of 400,000 square metres (99 acres), it is the largest film studio in Europe, and is considered the hub of Italian cinema. The studios were constructed during the Fascist era as part of a plan to revive the Italian film industry and to compete with Hollywood.

Filmmakers such as Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, Sergio Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Mel Gibson and Luca Guadagnino have worked at Cinecittà. More than 3,000 movies have been filmed there, of which 90 received an Academy Award nomination and 47 of these won it. In the 1950s, the number of international productions being made there led to Rome being dubbed "Hollywood on the Tiber."

Michael Latham Powell (30 September 1905 – 19 February 1990) was an English filmmaker, celebrated for his partnership with Emeric Pressburger. Through their production company The Archers, they together wrote, produced and directed a series of classic British films, notably The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Canterbury Tale (1944), I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), A Matter of Life and Death (1946, Stairway to Heaven in the U.S.), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948) and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951).

His controversial Peeping Tom (1960), which was so vilified on first release that it seriously damaged his career, is now considered a classic, and possibly the earliest "slasher movie". Many renowned filmmakers, such as Francis Ford Coppola, George A. Romero, Brian De Palma, Bertrand Tavernier and Martin Scorsese have cited Powell as an influence.

George Walton Lucas Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American filmmaker and philanthropist. He created the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises and founded Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic and THX. He served as chairman of Lucasfilm before selling it to the Walt Disney Company in 2012. Nominated for four Academy Awards, he is considered to be one of the most significant figures of the 20th-century New Hollywood movement, and a pioneer of the modern blockbuster. Despite this, he has remained an independent filmmaker for most of his career.

After graduating from the University of Southern California in 1967, Lucas moved to San Francisco and co-founded American Zoetrope with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. He wrote and directed THX 1138 (1971), based on his student short Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which was a critical success but a financial failure. His next work as a writer-director was American Graffiti (1973), inspired by his youth in early 1960s Modesto, California, and produced through the newly founded Lucasfilm. The film was critically and commercially successful and received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture. Lucas's next film, the epic space opera Star Wars (1977), later retitled A New Hope, had a troubled production but was a surprise hit, becoming the highest-grossing film at the time, winning six Academy Awards and sparking a cultural phenomenon. Lucas produced and co-wrote the sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). With director Steven Spielberg, he created, produced, and co-wrote Indiana Jones films Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The Temple of Doom (1984), The Last Crusade (1989) and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and served as an executive producer, with a cursory involvement in pre and post-production, on The Dial of Destiny (2023).

Youth Without Youth is a 2007 fantasy drama film written, directed, and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the novella of the same name by Romanian author Mircea Eliade. The film is a co-production between the United States, Romania, France, Italy and Germany. It was the first film that Coppola had directed in ten years, since 1997's The Rainmaker.

The film opens in 1938, with an elderly Romanian professor contemplating suicide. He is struck by lightning, and consequently finds himself rejuvenated. He subsequently develops psychic powers, which attract the attention of Nazi agents. He flees to Switzerland, where he meets a reincarnation of his past lover. He discovers information both about her various past incarnations, and about the evolutionary potential of humanity.

Andrés Arturo García Menéndez (born April 12, 1956) is an American actor, director, producer, and musician. He first rose to prominence acting in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987) alongside Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, and Robert De Niro. He continued to act in films such as Stand and Deliver (1988), and Internal Affairs (1990). He then co-starred in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part III (1990) as Vincent Mancini, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

He continued to act in Hollywood films such as Stephen Frears' Hero (1992), the romantic drama When a Man Loves a Woman (1994), and the action thriller Desperate Measures (1998). In 2000, he produced and acted in the HBO television film, For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story (2000), where he received a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award nominations. He also starred in Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven (2001) and its sequels, Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007). In 2005, García directed and starred in the film The Lost City alongside Dustin Hoffman and Bill Murray. He also starred in New York, I Love You (2008), the dramedy City Island (2009), the romantic comedy At Middleton (2013), and the crime thriller Kill the Messenger (2014). He has had supporting roles in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Book Club, The Mule, the HBO television movie My Dinner with Hervé (all 2018), and the title role in the Father of the Bride remake (2022).

THX 1138 is a 1971 American social science fiction film co-written and directed by George Lucas in his feature directorial debut. Produced by Francis Ford Coppola and co-written by Walter Murch, the film stars Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasence, with Don Pedro Colley, Maggie McOmie, and Ian Wolfe in supporting roles. The film is set in a dystopian future in which the citizens are controlled by android police and mandatory use of drugs that suppress emotions.

THX 1138 was developed from Lucas's 1967 student film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which he created while attending the USC School of Cinematic Arts. The feature film was produced in a joint venture between Warner Bros. and American Zoetrope. A novelization by Ben Bova was published in 1971.

American Graffiti is a 1973 American coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by George Lucas, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, written by Lucas, Gloria Katz, and Willard Huyck, and starring Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith, Candy Clark, Mackenzie Phillips, Cindy Williams, and Wolfman Jack. Harrison Ford and Bo Hopkins also appear. Set in Modesto, California, in 1962, the film is a study of the cruising and early rock and roll cultures popular among Lucas' age group at that time. Through a series of vignettes, it tells the story of a group of teenagers and their adventures throughout a single summer night.

While Lucas was working on his first film, THX 1138, Coppola asked him to write a coming-of-age film. The genesis of American Graffiti took place in Modesto in the early 1960s, during Lucas's teenage years. He was unsuccessful in pitching the concept to financiers and distributors but found favor at Universal Pictures after every other major film studio turned him down. Filming began in San Rafael, California, but the production crew was denied permission to shoot beyond a second day. As a result, production was moved to Petaluma, California. It is the first film to be produced by his Lucasfilm production banner.