Sofia Coppola’s ‘The Beguiled’ criticized for leaving out a slave narrative from the Confederate South

Weeks after her historic best director win for “The Beguiled” at the Cannes Film Festival, Sofia Coppola is facing backlash for her decision to omit people of color from the Civil War drama.

Set in the Confederate South, the much-anticipated film centers on the inhabitants of an all-girls school who take in, and are later seduced by, an injured Union soldier. The removal of two black characters from the original Thomas Cullinan novel — one of whom made it to Don Siegel’s 1971 adaptation — was a conscious decision on the writer-director’s part.