Gia Coppola’s feature debut – the teen-centered drama Palo Alto, starring Emma Roberts, Jack Kilmer and James Franco has been selected as Centerpiece presentation of the 57th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 24–May 8). Palo Alto is  adapted from Franco’s book Palo Alto Stories. The Festival’s Centerpiece is designed to showcase talented young directors with their latest film. Writer-director Gia Coppola is expected to attend the screening.  

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We couldn’t ask for a better fit for the Festival’s Centerpiece selection,” said San Francisco Film Society Executive Director Noah Cowan. “A skilled adaptation of the writings of one of our most interesting contemporary artists, a locally-set story, and the feature debut of the newest member of one of this country’s most remarkable and prolific film families. This is going to be quite a night!”

Good girl April (Emma Roberts) grapples with her attraction to her soccer coach Mr. B (James Franco), stoner artist Teddy (Jack Kilmer) finds trouble under the influence of his defiant best bud Fred (Nat Wolff) and promiscuous Emily (Zoe Levin) pins her fragile sense of self on her many sexual encounters. With this adaptation of Franco’s book of short stories, fifth-generation filmmaker Gia Coppola makes an assured feature debut mining the field of troubled adolescence that both her grandfather Francis and aunt Sofia explored before her. Coppola makes the genre wholly her own with an original take on aimless youth that captures not just the sex, drugs and alcohol, but also the angst and alienation.