Francis Ford Coppola's granddaughter Gia admits that she didn't watch The Godfather until last year

Gia Coppola never felt a rush to see one of cinema’s all-time greats, even if it was created by her grandfather

You might think that if you were part of the Coppola family dynasty that watching The Godfather would be as mandatory as learning to read, and yet Francis Ford Coppola’s granddaughter, Gia, only watched the film for the first time last year.

The 27-year-old – whose first film Palo Alto hits UK cinemas on 17 October – was never overly rushed to see her family’s film back catalogue.

"Friends would ask, 'Have you seen The Godfather?' and I’d be like, 'No,'" she said, adding that it was only Palo Alto actor James Franco who convinced her to watch it.

"He sat me down and we watched I and II back-to-back. I was blown away."

The daughter of Gian-Carlo Coppola, the niece of Sofia Coppola and Jason Schwartzman’s cousin, the rising filmmaker says that the pressure of her relatives achievements wasn’t lost on her.

"It felt intimidating,” she told The Evening Standard. "I wasn’t sure what my passion was. I never paid attention to movies until fairly recently."

It was Franco’s collection of short stories of the same name that inspired her to make her first film, which is based on a group of dissatisfied American high school students, starring Emma Roberts.

She has direceted a series of short films for fashion label Opening Ceremony, although Palo Alto is her feature-length.

"You don’t find much that articulates that time as a teenager well," she said. "It’s always PG and too clean."