"I would like to make two more films: one simple and small, just for fun, which I’d like to shoot in Italy. The other, gigantic”. Francis Ford Coppola came to Rome to present his colossal film Megalopolis. The director of The Godfatherand Apocalypse Now, 85 years old, with six Oscars and two Palmes d’Or, visited Cinecittà for the ceremony where he was given the keys and a street was named in his honor: Viale Francis Ford Coppola. Despite his modesty ("I'm a grandfather, close to death"), Coppola is still more interested in the future than the past, starting with his own. "I don’t like being called a master or Mister Coppola. I’m Uncle Ciccio. We’re all relatives, members of the great family of homo sapiens. The best reward is when a director tells me, 'I chose this profession after watching one of your films’”. It was Italian directors who inspired him. "As a young man in New York, I dreamed of coming to Rome to study at the Centro Sperimentale”. The message of Megalopolis, his very personal epic set in a near-future New York, but with themes from Ancient Rome, is that empires fall when people stop believing in them. "But after the fall, there is always a new beginning. It’s the cycle of life: death and rebirth”. Coppola also spoke about Italy: "It’s a perfect metaphor for the world. A fantastic country: it has the best artists, doctors, scientists. It can achieve anything in the best possible way—except for creating a government that works”.