A 4K-restored version of Dev Benegal’s 1994 film English, August will have its premiere at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival as part of the Classics section, the Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) announced on Friday.
The selection marks a hat-trick for FHF at the festival, after its restorations of Ghatashraddha (1977) and Do Bigha Zamin (1953) were showcased in the last two editions.
“FHF’s hat-trick at the Venice International Film Festival! We are thrilled to announce that FHF's 4K restoration of Dev Benegal's award-winning film 'English, August' (1994) has been selected for its World Premiere at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival,” reads a part of the post on Instagram.
The restored film will be presented at the festival by Dev Benegal, actor Rahul Bose, producer Anuradha Parikh, sound recordist Vikram Joglekar, and FHF director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur.
Based on Upamanyu Chatterjee’s 1988 novel, English, August follows a young, city-bred civil servant whose life is upended when he is posted to a small town, where he struggles to adjust.
The film also features Tanvi Azmi, Mita Vashisht and Shivaji Satam.
The restoration was undertaken by the Film Heritage Foundation at the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in collaboration with Benegal, cinematographer Anoop Jotwani and producer Parikh.
In 2011, Benegal noted in a blog post that the film’s original 35 mm negative had been damaged due to poor storage conditions at a Chennai laboratory. He later revealed in 2020 that a well-preserved 35 mm print was discovered at the National Film Archive of India, making restoration possible.
The Film Heritage Foundation noted that the restoration utilised the best available archival materials, including 35 mm release prints preserved by the NFDC–National Film Archive of India and FHF, alongside digital audio tapes of the soundtrack preserved by Benegal. The 83rd Venice International Film Festival is set to run from August 26 to September 5.
Alongside English, August, the Venice Classics line-up includes restored versions of films by Roberto Rossellini, Roman Polanski, Ernst Lubitsch, John Cassavetes, Andrzej Wajda and Ettore Scola, among others.