Legendary director Francis Ford Coppola shared his cathartic exploration of a father’s pain over a child’s death in his new film Twixt, which premiered at the Toronto festival.

The gothic romance, partly filmed in 3D, stars Val Kilmer as a struggling author flogging his latest third-rate thriller on book tour, when he confronts a mysterious death in a grim California town. The main protagonist in the film, who lost a daughter, encounters the ghost of the murdered girl (Elle Fanning) who reveals the town’s secrets.

Mr Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now) said the script arose from a “vivid dream” he had in Istanbul. “I was thinking while I was having it, ‘Oh, this is like a story’,” he told a press conference.

Inspired also by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, it is a deeply personal tale for Mr Coppola too. “In some ways, making a film is like asking a question. I didn’t realise it was going to take me to something I haven’t ever admitted to myself,” he said.

Mr Coppola’s eldest son Gian-Carlo, 22, died in a speedboat accident on the South River in Annapolis, Maryland in 1986, when Gian-Carlo was in the early stages of a film production career.

The driver of the boat, Griffin O’Neal, son of US actor Ryan O’Neal failed to see that two boats he tried to navigate between were tethered.

Gian-Carlo was decapitated, while Mr O’Neal was sentenced to 18 months probation for negligent operation of a boat.

“Every parent feels that they’re responsible for whatever might happen to their kid,” Mr Coppola said, “but I didn’t realise how much I felt personally responsible for what happened some 20 to 24 years ago.”

He said he realised during filming that “it was time to own up to the fact that deep down in my heart I felt responsible because I could have gone, he wanted me to go.”

“I should have been there.” Whether I’ll feel better (now), I don’t know,” he added.