Two of the most high profile selections at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival come from filmmakers with a lengthy and acclaimed history in Hollywood. Even so, neither Francis Ford Coppola or Kevin Costner could rely upon Hollywood and its usual cast of executives and financiers to help them make the films that brought them to Cannes. Instead, each took the unusual step of funding their film’s production out of their own fortunes.

Coppola’s passion project, “Megalopolis” stars an ensemble cast including Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Shia LaBeouf, Aubrey Plaza, Jason Schwartzman and Jon Voight, to name just a handful. To bankroll his ambitious movie, Coppola sold his Napa Valley winery and risked his personal fortune. However, the 85-year-old filmmaker said he has never really cared about money, “There’s so many people, when they die, they say, ‘Oh, I wish I had done this. I wish I had done that.’ But when I die, I’m gonna say ‘I got to do this. And I got to see my daughter win an Oscar. And I got to make wine. And I got to make every movie I wanted to make.’ And I’m gonna be so busy thinking of all the things that I got to do that when I die, I won’t notice it.”

Costner took a similar risk in funding the first two parts of his four-movie western, “Horizon: An American Saga,” the first chapter of which premiered out of competition in Cannes. “I’ve had good luck in my life and I’ve acquired some things, land, some homes that are important to me and they’re valuable, but I don’t need four homes, like anyone, so I will risk those homes to make my movies,” Costner said after mortgaging his properties to finance his film. “I wish I didn’t do it, because I want to leave those homes to my children. But my children will have to live their own life and if I have not made a mistake, they’ll still maybe have these four homes.”