Kevin Costner’s 1990 Western epic Dances With Wolves is heading back to the big screen with a nearly four-hour extended director’s cut. The newly restored 4K version premieres Friday, August 7. It screens at the 79th Locarno Film Festival in the open-air Piazza Grande.
And it brings a lot of new footage. The project adds over 30 minutes of unseen material to the Oscar-winning film. Zurich-based laboratory Cinegrell handled the technical heavy lifting. They coordinated the physical restoration alongside Locarno Heritage and international sales agent K5 International.
Costner’s feature directorial debut famously forced Hollywood to pay attention to the Western genre again. The original theatrical run turned a tight $22 million budget into over $424 million globally. Then it swept the 1991 Academy Awards. It took home seven Oscars, scoring Best Picture and Best Director.
But Locarno’s preservation lineup goes beyond Costner. The festival will also honor the late Studio Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata. His son, Kosuke Takahata, is set to introduce a special screening of the 1988 animated film Grave of the Fireflies, rounding out a festival slate honoring international cinema history.
Also joining the Piazza Grande schedule is Safi Faye’s 1975 film Letter from My Village. That release marked the first commercially distributed feature directed by a sub-Saharan African woman. Locarno organizers continue to pull these restored classics back into the public eye.