In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, the 1989 film directed by Pradip Krishen and written by Arundhati Roy, will hit theatres on March 13, the Film Heritage Foundation announced on Saturday.

The National Award-winning film has been restored in 4K by the Foundation, allowing contemporary audiences to watch the film in enhanced visual quality on the big screen, according to a press release.

The restored version was recently screened at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival under its Classics segment. It is now set for release across 14 cities and 19 cinemas in India.

To mark the release, Krishen, along with members of the cast and crew, will attend special screenings with Film Heritage Foundation Director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur on March 13 at Inox Nariman Point in Mumbai and on March 14 at PVR Plaza CP in Delhi.

“If not for the Film Heritage Foundation and Shivendra Singh Dungarpur’s several years’ long dogged perseverance and stubborn love for the film, and if not for Pradip’s carefully archived material, In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones would not have had the opportunity to take a bow in the real world before retiring to a resting place in some dim archive,” Roy said in a statement.

The film was partly inspired by Roy’s experiences at the School of Planning and Architecture. The Booker Prize-winning author wrote the screenplay and also acted in the television movie, directed by her then-husband Krishen.

It marked Roy’s first screenplay. She had earlier collaborated with Krishen on the 1985 colonial-era drama Massey Sahib. The two later worked together again on 1992’s Electric Moon, with Roy writing the screenplay and Krishen directing.

Besides Roy, the film featured Arjun Raina and Roshan Seth in lead roles. Shah Rukh Khan and Manoj Bajpayee, then active in Delhi’s theatre circuit, appeared in small roles in the film.

Dungarpur said it “was not just a restoration, but a resurrection of a film that had disappeared”. “It reaffirmed our foundation’s commitment not just to preserve and restore films, but to ensure that they reach the public,” he added.

“I walked away from cinema in 1994 because none of the 3 films I had made had been distributed and exhibited and I didn't think I'd be able to find money to make more films. So it feels like a dream that a small film I'd made in 1988 that was shown just once late at night on Doordarshan has been beautifully restored by Film Heritage Foundation and premiered in the Classics Section of the Berlinale,” Krishen said.

Limited copies of Penguin Books’ new edition of the original screenplay of the film, written by Roy, will be available for purchase at the special screenings. The copies will be signed by the director, cast and crew.