Cinema: Sundance Sorority

SOFIA COPPOLA The Virgin Suicides

Some Sundance directors have heftier credentials, like two-time Oscar-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple. Others may have hotter properties, like Mary Harron with American Psycho. But only one made her film debut in the most famous scene of Hollywood's most famous gangster movie. Sofia Coppola was the baby baptized during the killer climax to The Godfather, directed by her father Francis. Now 28, and having rummaged through the other arts, she has made her first feature. Like Michael Corleone, Sofia is joining the family business.

"I'm like an Army brat," she says. "I've lived all over." As a child she played on the Philippine beaches where Dad was filming Apocalypse Now. At 16 she co-wrote Francis' episode of New York Stories. Then she appeared in Godfather III and got savaged by the critics. "After that, I definitely did not want to be an actress." She tried painting, photography, video.

Now married to director Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich), Sofia read Jeffrey Eugenides' cult novel about five suicidal teen sisters and started a script before she even had the rights. The $3.5 million film, with Kathleen Turner and James Woods as the girls' parents, was produced by Dad's American Zoetrope. If it leads to a brilliant career, tomorrow's moviegoers may hear the name Francis Coppola and say, "That guy--wasn't he...Sofia Coppola's father?"

GINA PRINCE-BYTHEWOOD Love and Basketball

Because the family TV broke when she was seven and wasn't replaced for eight years, this California girl fell in love with books. Reading 20 a week, she had more fun than she could imagine--until she got into UCLA's film program. "I was working on a crew carrying lighting equipment," she says, "when it clicked how happy I was being on a set." Prince-Bythewood, who is half black, got help from Bill Cosby, the NAACP and Sundance's Robert Redford. Love and Basketball, a $15 million hoop-dreams drama with Omar Epps and Alfre Woodard, was produced by Spike Lee's company (her husband, Reggie Rock Bythewood, wrote Get on the Bus for Lee). Now, at 30, she plans a slave epic, but--here's a Hollywood novelty--from a black perspective. "If I'm not telling these stories," she asks, "who will?"

ANN HU Shadow Magic

What does it take to get those mortal enemies, China and Taiwan, to work together? Just a Chinese kid who moved to New York City. Hu's Shadow Magic, about a British entrepreneur (Jared Harris) bringing the cinema to China in 1902, is the first film co-produced by the Beijing Film Studio and Taiwan's Central Motion Picture Corp. Hu, 44, is a child of the Cultural Revolution; her parents were sent to labor camps while she served as a Red Guard. She taught herself English and in 1979 was among the first Chinese sent to U.S. schools. "I was always too stubborn," Hu says. So she wouldn't be cowed by a little thing like directing an epic in her homeland. "Americans and Chinese are very much alike," she says. "The film gives me a chance to get that message across."

MARY HARRON American Psycho