It was nearly a quarter of a century in the making, and it was worth it.Sofia Coppolamade her first appearance at theMill Valley Film Festival, 24½ years after her debut with“The Virgin Suicides”at the Cannes Film Festival just days after turning 28.

Now she is an acknowledged master filmmaker, and her latest, thePriscilla Presleybiopic“Priscilla,”cements her status as filmmaking’s patron saint for teenage girls, an impulse that began when she herself was a teenager growing up in St. Helena, about an hour’s drive from Mill Valley.

“This is such a treat,” Coppola told a sold-out crowd of roughly 300 on Wednesday, Oct. 11, at the Cinemark CinéArts Sequoia as she accepted the MVFF Award for filmmaking. “I really appreciate your being with us, and I’m so thankful to be a part of the festival in my home area of Northern California. … I’m thankful to my parents for always bringing me to film sets, so I learned how to do this.”

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Her parents, of course, areFrancis FordandEleanor Coppola. They met on his first film, the Roger Corman-produced low-budget horror flick “Dementia 13” in 1962 and were married the next year; they celebrated their 60th anniversary in February.

Francis, 84, went on to direct such iconic classics as “The Godfather” movies and “Apocalypse Now”; Eleanor, 87, who was assistant art director on“Dementia 13,”has a filmmaking career of her own, as well as two memoirs. Her documentary, “Hearts of Darkness” (1991), about the chaotic filming of “Apocalypse Now” in the Philippines, features a young Sofia scurrying around the set.Talk about film school.

Yet, Sofia Coppola’s career has charted a different path. The Mills College alum’s films illuminate the interior lives of young women with “sensitive portrayals (within) so many different genres and stories, which are a testament to her amazing creativity,” saidMVFF founder and Executive Director Mark Fishkin, who presented the award — created by Mill Valley sculptor Alice Corning — alongside the festival’s director of programming, Zoe Elton.

“Priscilla” begins when its subject (played by Cailee Spaeny of“The Craft: Legacy”) meets Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi of the HBO series“Euphoria”and the upcoming film “Saltburn,” which alsoscreened at the 46th edition of MVFF) at age 14 on the West German U.S. Army base where both her father and the King of Rock ’n’ Roll were serving. As his girlfriend and then wife, she becomes as trapped in her gilded cage of Graceland as the five upper-middle-class suburban high school girls in “The Virgin Suicides” and the teenage queen in Coppola’s“Marie Antoinette”(2006).

Coppola grew up in a gilded cage herself. But, as she told writer Isabel Duffy-Pinner during a 30-minute Q&A following the MVFF screening at the Sequoia, her experiences were loving and positive.

“I just remember everything being epic and important and with a lot of feeling and driving around and listening to music,” Coppola said, adding that as a teenager, “your senses are more heightened or something.”

After reading Jeffrey Eugenides’ book “The Virgin Suicides,” she said she was compelled to make movies about teenage girls “because they aren’t appreciated because they’re sensitive at that age.”

“I felt like I didn’t see a lot of films with teenage girls that felt relatable or beautiful,” Coppola continued. “I just feel like teenage girls deserve to have something beautiful and poetic.”

“I went to high school in St. Helena, and I spent a lot of time sitting in my room. You have time to just think. And I’d talk on the phone and take photos and decorate the walls in my room and all that kind of stuff. … I loved that when you’re in your room, you’re alone. But you can hear your family downstairs, so like there’s people around, but you’re on your own.”

Coppola is the youngest of three children —Roman, a filmmaker and writing collaborator with Wes Anderson, served as second unit director on “Priscilla.” (Her oldest brother, Gian-Carlo, was killed at age 22 in a boating accident in 1986.) One could argue that Coppola, only the third woman to be Oscar-nominated for directing (for 2003’s“Lost in Translation”) is having the career her mother might have had had she lived in a different era.

She told theHollywood Reporterin August that she could relate to Priscilla Presley’s story in part because she grew up “living in a house with my dad, this big personality, a great artist and a lot of our life revolving around that. And seeing my mom’s life, how she was trying to find her way within his, I could relate to that.

“I think about my mom’s generation and how hard it was to be independent.”

“Priscilla” is dedicated to Eleanor Coppola. Rumors about the Coppola matriarch’s health were stoked last week when Sofia canceled a news conference ahead of the film’s U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival, releasing a statement that said, in part, “I’m so sorry to not be there with you, but I’m with my mother, to whom this film is dedicated.”

Sofia Coppola, who lives in New York with husband Thomas Mars, lead singer of the French indie pop band Phoenix, also canceled media gatherings during her visit to Mill Valley and skipped the after-party, but she kept her commitment to the festival. Fishkin and Elton met her upon her arrival and thanked her for making the trip, then briefly huddled in conversation.

To the Mill Valley audience, Coppola marveled at how she is now the mother of two teenage girls — Romy, 16, and Cosima, 13.

Romy “was visiting the set and bugging me to take a picture with Jacob,” she said smiling. “So I could relate to Priscilla’s parents as I was making the film. It was the first time I was in the position where I could relate to the teenage characterandthe parents.”

One could imagine that Coppola would be the perfect mother to teenage girls. As an artist, though, she seems destined to be remembered as every teen girl’s cinematic big sister.

Reach G. Allen Johnson:ajohnson@sfchronicle.com