Moscow, Jan 29: Francis Ford Coppola won high praise from Vladimir Putin today, and delivered a director's verdict on the Russian President: good speaker, looks younger in person.
Coppola, in Moscow to add a Russian award to his pile of prizes, met with Putin in the Kremlin hours ahead of a ceremony in which he was to receive a Golden Eagle for his contribution to world cinematography.
Putin congratulated him on the honor in a televised portion of the meeting, saying that ``I understand you can't be surprised by an award, you have so many.''
“In Russia your works are well known and highly valued,'' Putin told Coppola, adding that he was not just referring to ``The Godfather,'' which has been extremely
popular here, but also to films ``that so accurately tell of the horrors of war.'' ‘Apocalypse Now’ was shown at a Moscow film festival in 1979.
Coppola, who came to tea with Putin along with his granddaughter and Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov, praised Putin for his speech at commemorations Thursday marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops, in which he spoke out strongly against anti-Semitism and said he was ashamed of it's existence in his own country.
``I saw your speech in Poland the other day- excellent speech,'' Coppola said. ``But in person you look much younger than you did on TV.''
Coppola gave Putin a DVD of ‘Lost in Translation,' which won his daughter Sofia Coppola an Oscar for original screenplay.
Bureau Report
