Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026: Ones to Watch

The ICO team share some of their highlights from this year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, the world’s largest festival dedicated to cinematic heritage, rare archives, and film restoration.

Contents:

Network (dir. Sidney Lumet, 1976)
House of Strangers (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1949)
A Bucket of Blood (dir. Roger Corman, 1959)
The Devils (dir. Ken Russell, 1971)
The Overcoat / Šinel’ (dir. Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, 1926)
Clash by Night (dir. Fritz Lang, 1952)
Sanshiro Sugata (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1943)
Summer in the City (dir. Wim Wenders, 1970)

Catharine Des Forges, Director

Network (dir. Sidney Lumet, 1976, USA)

Image courtesy of Park Circus/Amazon MGM Studios

When Network premiered in 1976, much of the conversation centred on Peter Finch’s posthumous Academy Award-winning performance. Returning to it today, however, it is the extraordinary Faye Dunaway who proves utterly electrifying. One of the defining actresses of her generation – though perhaps less familiar now beyond devotees of 1970s American cinema – she delivers a breathtaking performance as Diana Christensen, an ambitious and ruthlessly calculating television executive. With uncanny instinct, she reads the cultural and corporate mood, exploiting both for personal advancement, leaving casualties in her wake.

Finch is equally extraordinary as Howard Beale, the veteran news anchor who has devoted his life to the network, only to be discarded by a new management obsessed with ratings. His dismissal unleashes one of cinema’s most unforgettable acts of rebellion. When Beale abandons the conventions of broadcast journalism in favour of increasingly incendiary on-air tirades, he unexpectedly becomes a national phenomenon, transforming outrage into spectacle.

Although Network is ostensibly about a television news network, its relevance in 2026 is almost unsettling. Its themes speak directly to an age of social media, algorithm-driven attention, tech oligarchs and the rise of populist politics. Watching it now feels much less like revisiting a classic than receiving a dispatch from the future.

Sidney Lumet’s film remains a towering achievement: brilliantly written, impeccably acted by its cast of accomplished character actors (including William Holden, Robert Duvall and Ned Beatty) and newly restored from the original 35mm camera negative, allowing audiences to experience it at its full cinematic power on the big screen. In a decade that produced masterpieces such as All the President’s Men, The Conversation, Klute, Chinatown and Jaws, Network more than holds its own – a ferociously intelligent, darkly funny and profoundly unsettling examination of the enduring conflict between ethics, public responsibility and corporate power.

Network is available to book now via Park Circus. 

Network was restored in 4K by Amazon MGM Studios and The Criterion Collection at Resillion and Moving Picture Imaging laboratories, from the original 35mm camera negative and the original magnetic sound tracks. 

House of Strangers (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1949, USA)

Image courtesy of Park Circus/Disney

Over the course of a long and illustrious career, Joseph L. Mankiewicz amassed more than sixty credits as a producer, writer and director, establishing himself as one of Hollywood’s most intelligent and accomplished filmmakers.

Newly restored, House of Strangers was released in 1949, the same year as the much better-known No Way Out, and immediately before the extraordinary run of films that would earn Mankiewicz consecutive Academy Awards for A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve, recognising his singular gifts as both writer and director.

Viewed in that context, House of Strangers emerges as a compelling and unjustly overlooked work: a richly textured family drama anchored by a commanding Edward G. Robinson. As Gino Monetti, the formidable Italian-American patriarch of a family banking dynasty, Robinson embodies a man who governs through an intoxicating blend of authority, intimidation and fierce familial loyalty.

Mankiewicz unfolds the story through an elegant interplay of present-day action and flashback, centring on Max Monetti (Richard Conte), the son whose unwavering loyalty to his father comes at the cost of his relationship with his brothers. Alongside him, Susan Hayward brings intelligence, sensuality and emotional complexity to Max’s lover, enriching a narrative that deftly intertwines family conflict, crime, betrayal and revenge. As with so many of the discoveries showcased at Il Cinema Ritrovato, House of Strangers is a film which offers many pleasures and whose reputation deserves to be far greater. Beautifully restored and endlessly engrossing, it stands as a potent reminder of Mankiewicz’s extraordinary command of character, dialogue and dramatic structure.

House of Strangers is available to book now via Park Circus. 

House of Strangers was restored in 4K by The Walt Disney Studios and The Film Foundation in collaboration with Academy Film Archive and BFI National Archive at Cineric and Audio Mechanics laboratories, from a 35mm nitrate composite finegrain and a 35mm nitrate composite dupe negative. 

Heather Bradshaw, Assistant Film Programmer

A Bucket of Blood (dir. Roger Corman, 1959, USA)

Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood is a rare example of the centenary director’s take on genre subversion, being his first satirical comedy-horror produced specifically for a younger, teen drive-through audience. The film takes on mid-20th-century Beatnik culture, which rejected mainstream conformity and consumerism through an intellectual, bohemian lifestyle, by focusing on a dopey, impressionable busboy, Walter Paisley (Dick Miller), who works at a 1950s art café. Surrounded by spoken word poets and artists displaying their works in the café, Walter becomes desperate to gain the respect of his cruel peers – who subtly mock his ineptitude – by attempting to become a sculptor. After accidentally killing his landlady’s cat, Walter hides the body beneath a layer of clay and calls it his first ‘piece’, which immediately catches the eye of pretentious art critics at the Yellow Door Café. Following his success, one thing leads to another, and Walter’s desperation for validation drives him to a killing spree, to create more ‘masterpieces’ of clay-encased dead bodies.

What’s so interesting about A Bucket of Blood in comparison to other Corman films is its comic undertone, which went on to inspire other works such as the director’s monster movie parody Creature from the Haunted Sea and dark farce The Little Shop of Horrors; the latter using many of the same sets from A Bucket of Blood‘s production. The success of Corman’s pivot from horror to comedy satire was down to a combination of intelligent critique and actors playing the roles straight, creating an archetype for cult, low-budget horror that feels akin to the spirit of the home-video boom of the 1980s. Corman’s piercing satire of the art world equally shares similarities with the hipster and shoegaze subcultures of the 21st century, which packs the same judicious impact for modern audiences that it did 67 years ago.

A Bucket of Blood is available to book now via Park Circus. 

A Bucket of Blood screened from a restoration by Film Masters at Madhouse Productions and Colour by Marc laboratories, from 35mm archival elements.

Rose Butler, Film Programmer

The Devils (dir. Ken Russell, 1971, UK)

Banned in several countries on release and heavily cut for exhibition in others, the restored director’s cut of Ken Russell’s gloriously transgressive The Devils was the hot ticket at Il Cinema Ritrovato this year. Its screening in Bologna was preceded by a coveted spot in May’s Cannes Classics line-up, with hopeful passholders stirring the ticket reservation site into an appropriate frenzy. Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave star in a loose adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s non-fiction account of Urbain Grandier, a Catholic priest accused of witchcraft after several possessions in Loudun, France in the 17th Century. What ensues in Russell’s film is a bold and feverish commentary on sexual repression and political corruption, igniting harsh responses from critics and censors upon its release in 1971, and, since then, often referred to as one of the most controversial films ever made.

Now available in a glorious 4K restoration from the original camera negative, The Devils will be the leading release from Warner Bros. Clockwork later this year.

The Overcoat / Šinel’ (dir. Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, 1926, USSR)

Adapted from two short stories by novelist and playwright Nikolai Gogol, The Overcoat is a tragicomic take on the familiar parable of clothes making the man. The film centres on Akakiy Akakievich, a reclusive, downtrodden clerk whose life and fortunes seemingly turn around after he saves his every last penny and invests in a lavish, fur-lined overcoat. Such is the coat’s apparent power, Akakievich is physically rejuvenated upon wrapping the tailored fur around his shoulders. The film unfolds on the snowy-lined streets of St Petersburg throughout a particularly bleak winter, capturing rare footage of the city during its post-Revolutionary period.

The Overcoat was directed by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, both radical artists only in their early twenties at the time of the film’s production; five years earlier in 1921, Trauberg and Kozintsev delivered a manifesto to their peers, suggesting drastic upheaval of the creative industries; The Overcoat was only the second feature film of FEKS – The Factory of the Eccentric Actor, the resulting avant-garde theatre group intending to overthrow these established institutions and freeing contemporary creativity from the shackles of stifling tradition. With a style heavily indebted to the early works of German Expressionism, The Overcoat is a fascinating glimpse into early Soviet filmmaking by some of cinema’s boldest young voices of the time.

The Overcoat screened from a 4K restoration sourced from the George Eastman Museum in collaboration with MoMA – The Museum of Modern Art and Österreichische Filmmuseum at George Eastman Museum’s Film Preservation Services laboratory, from a 35mm nitrate print, a dupe negative provided by MoMA and a triacetate 35mm print provided by Österreichische Filmmuseum.

Clash by Night (dir. Fritz Lang, 1952, USA)

Image courtesy of Park Circus/Warner Bros.

Introduced by Wim Wenders to a packed audience, Clash by Night played as part of a brilliant retrospective of actress Barbara Stanwyck. Directed by Fritz Lang, following his successful shift to American film noir with 1944’s The Woman in the Window and 1945’s Scarlet Street, the film is based on the 1941 play of the same name by Clifford Odets, adapted for cinema by screenwriter Alfred Hayes.

Stopping just one crime short of becoming a true film noir, Clash by Night still paints a remarkably bleak portrait of the world, captured in crisp chiaroscuro by cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, notable for his films at RKO with producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourner (Cat People, Out of the Past). Stanwyck radiates a multitude of contradictions in her performance, partnered beautifully with Marilyn Monroe in one of her earliest screen roles. Less well-known than her pre-code work in Baby Face or the magnificent film noir blueprint Double Indemnity, Clash by Night is an excellent showcase for Stanwyck’s range as a performer.

Clash by Night is available to book now via Park Circus. 

Clash by Night was restored by Warner Bros., from the original camera negative and the optical soundtrack negative.

Sanshiro Sugata (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1943, Japan)

After several years working as a second unit director, Akira Kurosawa was given the reins to direct his own feature film in 1943. The result would be Sanshiro Sugata, a thrilling martial arts tale, directly inspired by prominent Judo practitioner Saigo Shiro. The film follows the wilful Sanshiro (Susumu Fujita), who travels to Tokyo to learn jujitsu, but is taken under the wing of a judo master, rapidly becoming one of the sport’s brightest stars. It is a story of kinetic action told alongside themes of moral discipline and personal growth, elements that would become quintessential features in Kurosawa’s oeuvre.

First released in Japan in 1943, Sanshiro Sugata passed the national board of censors thanks to a recommendation from Yasujiro Ozu, though the film would later be cut by seventeen minutes, removing nearly two thousand feet of film to comply with Japan’s wartime entertainment policies. In 2026, a 4K restoration was overseen by Toho, reintroducing twelve missing minutes from the original version. The resulting film is a showcase of Kurosawa’s directorial talents, a masterclass in precision and cinematic storytelling that would continue to define his career.

Sanshiro Sugata screened from a 4K restoration sourced from Toho at Toho Archives laboratories, from a 35mm master positive print and a 35mm duplicate negative.

Emily Duff, Marketing Coordinator

Summer in the City (dir. Wim Wenders, 1970, Germany)

Summer in the City marked Wim Wenders’ first feature film, created in 1970 as his thesis project while he was studying at the Munich Film Academy. 

Played just once as part of Il Cinema Ritrovato at Cinema Modernissimo, Wenders joined the screening not only to introduce it but also to sit in the audience with us and share his thoughts after rewatching. He laughed at how the University project was to create a short film in colour on 35mm, and yet he filmed 145 minutes (later cut to 116 minutes) in black-and-white on 16mm. He maintained the set short film budget by filming long scenes in a single take, resulting in a sprawling road movie.

Following Hanns (played by Hanns Zischler), a man just released from prison, we journey with him through Munich and then Berlin as he dives into bars to play pinball or song-select on the jukebox and takes refuge in various women’s homes, where he again plays DJ on their radios. Music is a huge element of Summer in the City, with the film even subtitled “dedicated to the Kinks” and ending with a list of the soundtrack among the credits. Wenders shared that at the time he hadn’t learnt about music licensing and so used as many of his favourite songs as he could fit in – with roughly eight songs by The Kinks alongside tracks from The Troggs, Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, Bob Dylan, and The Lovin’ Spoonful – including the film’s namesake, Summer in the City.

Working with many creatives who went on to be long-time collaborators, it really sets the scene for his later films, including his legendary Road Movie Trilogy, Alice in the Cities (1974), The Wrong Move (1975), and Kings of the Road (1976), where he again worked with cinematographer Robby Müller and editor Peter Przygodda.

During the heatwave (with Bologna at around 40°C) and days of back-to-back films, Summer in the City offered a sense of calm. It’s a casual European slice-of-life pacing familiar to fans of Before Sunrise, while its solitary, near-silent script is similar to Nomadland.

Summer in the City screened from a 2026 restoration by Wim Wenders Stiftung in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, from the original 16mm negative. 

For more insights into further films from the festival, including our ones to watch, visit the ICO Instagram profile and watch our Bologna ’26 highlight.

If you’re passionate about repertory cinema, don’t forget Cinema Rediscovered festival and their day of discussion, Reframing Film Sessions at Watershed, Bristol later in July. And save the date for Archive Screening Days that will be taking place at the National Science and Media Museum on 7 & 9 January 2026.

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