Film director Sofia Coppola and her French pop singer boyfriend Thomas Mars plan to get married in the ancestral southern Italian town of the filmmaker’s great grandfather.
The couple will wed in August in the town of Bernalda, in the Basilicata region. The wedding will take place in the 19th century villa Coppola’s father, the director Francis Ford Coppola, restructured, transforming it into a luxury inn.
Bernalda is located in the province of Matera where the poverty was so dire that into the mid-20th century many of its residents lived in a maze of caves — some dating back to Roman times — carved from yellowish tufa.
Agostino Coppola, Sofia’s great grandfather, in 1926 invented a machine that synchronised sound and images, contributing to sound movies.