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There’s growing concern over the health of legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. Since Tuesday, Rome's prestigious Tor Vergata Polyclinic has been hospitalizing the 86-year-old director behind classics like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now.
Coppola had just landed in Italy from the US, where he was promoting Megalopolis—his latest film, which took home the Palme d'Or at Cannes and stars Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, and Nathalie Emmanuel. The hospital admission was planned, and he was taken straight from the Fiumicino airport by ambulance. What was the initial purpose? He was scheduled for a simple heart procedure known as an ablation. But things didn’t go as expected.
According to the Italian publication La Repubblica, doctors discovered just before surgery that he had atrial fibrillation, a common but serious arrhythmia that can cause dangerous blood clots and raise the risk of stroke. The condition led them to postpone the operation, and he has been kept under observation.
Despite being based in the US, Coppola has deep ties to Italy. His grandfather was from Bernalda, where Coppola now holds honorary citizenship and often retreats to spend quiet summers. It’s likely he chose Rome for the procedure in hopes of maintaining privacy and calm. He’s also been known to scout filming locations and recharge creatively during these Italian getaways. Sources suggest that stress, a packed travel schedule, and the strain of a long-haul flight could have triggered the heart issue. It’s been a difficult year for him personally, following the loss of his wife.
So far, no official updates have come from his team or the hospital. Coppola’s last social media post was on Tuesday, when he shared a photo from a recent talk in Portland about Megalopolis. For now, fans and film enthusiasts are eagerly anticipating the iconic director's full recovery.