Kevin Costner’s DANCES WITH WOLVES Returns With a Newly Restored Director’s Cut Premiering at Locarno Film Festival

More than three decades after it rode into theaters and became one of the biggest Westerns of its era, Dances With Wolves is getting a fresh new life. If you’re a fan of Kevin Costner's Oscar-winning epic, you’ll soon have the chance to experience the film in a stunning new 4K restoration, and it sounds like it's going to be the definitive version.

The newly restored director's cut of Dances With Wolves will make its world premiere on August 7 at the Locarno Film Festival, where it will screen in the festival's famous open-air Piazza Grande as part of the Histoire(s) du Cinema program.

The restoration brings back the film in its nearly four-hour director's cut, adding more than 30 minutes of previously unseen footage. The project was completed by Zurich-based restoration lab Cinegrell in collaboration with the Locarno Film Festival through its Locarno Heritage initiative and the film's international sales agent, K5 International.

Released in 1990, Dances With Wolves follows a Union soldier during the American Civil War who gradually builds a deep connection with a Lakota Sioux community, changing his understanding of the world around him. The film became a massive critical and commercial success, winning seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Costner.

The festival highlighted the movie's lasting impact in a statement, saying: "Costner’s western epic, which won seven Academy Awards, including best picture and best director, helped redefine the western at the turn of the 1990s and drew global attention to the historical plight of Indigenous peoples on the American continent."

It's great to see a film like this getting the restoration treatment it deserves and seeing the expanded cut in pristine 4K should be an incredible experience for movie goers.

Dances With Wolves won't be the only restored classic featured in the Histoire(s) du Cinema lineup. The festival will also present a newly restored version of Letter From My Village, the 1975 film from pioneering Senegalese filmmaker Safi Faye.

The restoration was also completed by Cinegrell alongside the Locarno Heritage project and rights holder Arsenal FilmInstitut.

According to the festival: "Recognized as the first feature film by a woman from sub-Saharan Africa to receive commercial distribution, ‘Letter from My Village’ is set in the Serer region of rural Senegal and follows a young couple whose plans to marry are thwarted by drought and the precarious conditions of village life."

Genre fans will also have something to look forward to with a screening of Frankenstein Unbound, the final feature directed by legendary filmmaker Roger Corman.

Released in 1990, the science fiction and Gothic horror mashup stars John Hurt, Raúl Juliá, and Bridget Fonda, with festival organizers describing it as "a bold hybrid of science fiction and Gothic horror that creatively reconfigures the Frankenstein myth for the late 20th century."

The lineup also includes a screening of Grave of the Fireflies, the unforgettable 1988 masterpiece directed by Isao Takahata, one of the co-founders of Studio Ghibli.

The screening will serve as a tribute to the acclaimed filmmaker, who passed away in 2018, and will be introduced by his son, Kosuke Takahata. Takahata himself attended Locarno in 2009 to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Commenting on this year's retrospective program, Locarno Artistic Director Giona A. Nazzaro said: "From Kevin Costner to Safi Faye, the Locarno Film Festival engages with cinema of the past with an eye to the new generations and the audiences of tomorrow, who are already preparing today for the challenges posed by new technologies."

For Dances With Wolves, this restoration is a fitting way to celebrate one of the defining Westerns of the modern era. The film still sparks discussion more than 30 years later, and giving audiences the opportunity to experience Costner's full director's cut in restored 4K is exactly the kind of project film preservation is all about. It should be one of the highlights of this year's Locarno Film Festival.