At a conversation at the New York Film Festival — which was also streamed to 65 theaters across the U.S. and Canada with support from Imax — Coppola was joined by De Niro and Spike Lee to talk about his long journey to making “a Roman epic set in modern America as Rome,” as he described it.

The film follows a conflict between Cesar (played by Adam Driver), a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian future, and his opposition Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who remains committed to a regressive status quo.

Coppola also explained that he “deliberately got people to make this film who disagree. I mean, there’s actors in the movie that are voting another way, and there are people in it who have been canceled… and we in the movie, we all work together happily and creatively,” seemingly referencing co-stars Jon Voight, Shia LaBeouf and Dustin Hoffman.

“I didn’t want them to say, ‘Oh, it’s some woke movie, it’s just a political thing.’ We’re above politics in making the film, I thought, and yet, still we all liked each other and participated and made this film together,” he continued. “So I’m hopeful that we can work even with people who disagree with us to [achieve] a higher goal.” The filmmaker added that the movie calls specifically for audiences to have a debate about the future, “and I want everyone to be in on that debate. And I want no questions to be not permitted.”

Lee revealed he had screened Megalopolis to his students at NYU, saying of the film, “My brother continues to amaze me; his fearlessness, like he’s gonna do what has to do to get it done, bottom line.”

As Coppola briefly mentioned that he had gone to military school with Trump — “I was poor so I was a tuba player in the band, and he was rich, so he was in the headquarters where they could keep their lights on after ‘Taps’” — De Niro doubled down: “Just imagine Donald Trump directing this movie… He wants to destroy the country, and he could not do this movie. He couldn’t do anything that has a structure.”