Skip to main content
Priscilla film image

Priscilla

This event has passed

Canadian Premiere

Not so much a companion piece to Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis! as its polar opposite, Sofia Coppola’s portrait of the King’s child bride cuts out the razzmatazz to give us an empathetic, gentle, intimate love story… albeit a love story that will end in heartbreak.

Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) is just 14 when she meets Presley (Jacob Elordi, Euphoria) on a US military base in Germany, 1959. Courteous, respectful and a little sad, he sweeps her off her feet. He’s Elvis, after all. Next thing she knows she’s living in Graceland with the King of Rock-n-Roll and his daddy Vernon, still finishing her schooling, still a virgin. Her fairy tale romance is eventually consummated, but it’s not before she’s reading about her new husband’s on-set fling with Ann-Margret. And while her domestic situation might be the object of envy for most, Priscilla begins to understand it comes with zero autonomy; she’s a kept woman, a trophy wife, “caught in a trap,” you might say.

Coppola is smart — and generous — enough to show that Elvis was also trapped in his own way, and Priscilla is above all rueful, the bittersweet tale of a teen princess who outgrew her King.

 

Media Partner

Director
Cast

Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, Dagmara Dominczyk

Credits
Country of Origin

USA/Italy

Year

2023

Series

Special Presentations

Language

English

18+
113 min
Drama Women Directors

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits

Producer

Sofia Coppola, Lorenzo Mieli, Youree Henley

Screenwriter

Sofia Coppola

Cinematography

Philippe Le Sourd

Editor

Sarah Flack

Production Design

Tamara Deverell

Original Music

Phoenix & Randall Poster

Director

Sofia Coppola headshot

Sofia Coppola

Sofia Coppola has written and directed her eighth film Priscilla based on the memoir Elvis and Me by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley. Coppola made history in 2017 as only the second woman to win the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and the first woman to win since 1961 for her film, The Beguiled. Coppola’s directorial debut was The Virgin Suicides (1999) which she adapted from Pulitzer Prize-winner Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel of the same name. Coppola’s next film, Lost in Translation (2003) brought her the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay as well as Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Picture.

Filmography: The Virgin Suicides (1999); Lost in Translation (2003); Marie Antoinette (2006); The Beguiled (2017); On The Rocks (2020)

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

Love

Dir. Dag Johan Haugerud
119 min

This warm, thoughtful piece offers shrewd comic observations on modern dating as it trains a quizzical eye on the trysts of a female doctor, Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig), and her colleague, a gay male nurse, Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen).

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Wedding Banquet

Dir. Andrew Ahn
103 min

This joyful comedy cleverly updates Ang Lee's 1993 gay marriage comedy and transports the action to contemporary Seattle (actually, Vancouver).

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

April

Dir. Dea Kulumbegashvili
134 min

A doggedly mysterious and haunting account of an investigation into the professionalism of a Georgian Ob-Gyn, Nina, accused of negligance, Dea Kulumbegashvili's film has been compared to the work of masters like Haneke, Glazer and Reygadas.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

On Swift Horses

Dir. Daniel Minahan
119 min

A young couple's California dream turns sour when his charismatic card shark brother (Jacob Elordi) upends their ideas about what they want. This is a sumptuous 50s melodrama with a queer viewpoint.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Another Woman

Dir. Woody Allen
77 min

Gena Rowlands as philosophy teacher whose meticulously controlled life begins to unravel after she starts to eavesdrop on a psychotherapist's sessions.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Desert of Namibia

Dir. Yôko Yamanaka
137 min

A prizewinner at Cannes, Yôko Yamanaka's second film is an acerbic portrait of an arrogant, attractive, diffident, "difficult" 21-year-old woman, Kana (a mesmerizing Yuumi Kawai), who numbly drifts between boyfriends, leaving wreckage in her wake.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre