While there’s no word on whether Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2, which we reviewed two years ago following its Venice premiere, will ever see distribution, another epic western from Kevin Costner is getting new life. The Locarno Film Festival announced today that a new 4K version of Kevin Costner’s extended Dances with Wolves (1990), restored by Zurich-based laboratory Cinegrell in collaboration with the Locarno Film Festival through its Locarno Heritage project and its international sales agent, K5 International, will premiere at the festival on August 7.
Running nearly four hours with around 30 minutes of never-before-seen material, they note, “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. As presented on the giant screen of the Piazza Grande in the nearly four-hour extended edition – incorporating over half an hour of previously unseen additional material – this restoration offers audiences the chance to rediscover Costner’s expansive popular masterpiece as it was originally intended to be seen by the director himself.”
The festival also notes that “Safi Faye’s Letter from My Village (Kaddu Beykat, 1975), winner of the 2025 Heritage Restoration Contest, has also been newly restored by Cinegrell in collaboration with the Locarno Film Festival through its Locarno Heritage project and its rights holder, Arsenal Filminstitut. Recognised 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. Blending documentary and fiction, this key work of African and world cinema will debut in a restored version at the Festival.”
Giona A. Nazzaro, Artistic Director, said, “The Locarno Film Festival’s connection with the history of cinema runs deep and spans all its eras and forms. From the tradition of major, innovative retrospectives – which are enriched each year with new and exciting additions – to the world-renowned restorations of Locarno Heritage, the Festival has fostered a meaningful and multifaceted dialogue both with universally acclaimed masterpieces and with those chapters of cinema yet to be discovered or preserved. 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.”
The press release continues below.
As part of the Festival’s longstanding partnership with the Cinémathèque suisse, two films by Swiss experimental filmmaker Isa Hesse-Rabinovitch – Sirenen-Eiland (1981) and Geister und Gäste (1989) – will be shown in the programme, in the section Cinéma Suisse Redécouvert, which showcases rediscovered Swiss cinema of the past. A longtime illustrator and graphic artist, Hesse-Rabinovitch turned to filmmaking at the age of fifty, developing a multifaceted body of work. Crucially, the screenings in Locarno, organised in collaboration with the Museum Hermann Hesse in Montagnola, mark the starting point of a longer-term project of reinterpretation and presentation of Hesse-Rabinovitch’s oeuvre that the Cinémathèque suisse is developing together with partners at the University of Zurich.
The Locarno Film Festival and mudac – Cantonal Museum of Design and Contemporary Applied Arts at Plateforme 10 arts district, are joining forces to celebrate the work and legacy of Isao Takahata, one of the co-founders of Studio Ghibli and one of animation’s great masters. At Locarno79, the programme will feature Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru No Haka, 1988) in a tribute to the filmmaker on Friday, August 7, introduced by his son, Kosuke Takahata, and presented in collaboration with mudac, Plateforme 10. In 2009, Isao Takahata was present in Locarno, receiving an Honorary Leopard.
Finally, in a special centenary tribute, Histoire(s) du Cinéma will screen Roger Corman’s last film as a director, Frankenstein Unbound (1990), starring John Hurt, Raúl Juliá, and Bridget Fonda, a bold hybrid of science fiction and Gothic horror that creatively reconfigures the Frankenstein myth for the late twentieth century. The screening in Locarno offers a fitting occasion to honour the legacy of a fearless and extraordinarily prolific producer-director, who himself was previously awarded in Locarno.
The full official selection for Locarno79 will be announced at the press conference on Thursday, July 9, 2026.
The 79th Locarno Film Festival will take place from August 5-15, 2026.