The Venice International Film Festival has officially announced that the newly restored 4K version of Dev Benegal’s landmark, award-winning film English, August (1994) will celebrate its World Premiere in the prestigious Venice Classics Competition at the upcoming 83rd edition of the festival.
This selection marks the third consecutive year that Film Heritage Foundation (FHF), the not-for-profit organisation responsible for the restoration, has been invited to showcase a world premiere of its cinematic restorations on the global stage in Venice, following Girish Kasaravalli’s Ghatashraddha in 2024 and Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin in 2025.
Based on Upamanyu Chatterjee’s bestselling 1988 novel, English, August is an irreverent, darkly comic exploration of post-colonial identity. It follows a young man from an elite, Westernized background cast adrift in the alien, bureaucratic landscape of small-town India.
The landmark film will be presented at Venice by director Dev Benegal, lead actor Rahul Bose, producer and production designer Anuradha Parikh, and Film Heritage Foundation Director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur.
Director Dev Benegal states, “Films are fragile. They survive because people choose to preserve them. Restoration is more than preserving a film; it is the preservation of a conversation across generations. I am profoundly grateful to the Film Heritage Foundation and everyone involved for restoring English, August, my first feature film with such care, dedication, and love. Seeing the film return to the screen in the Venice Classics Competition at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival is both humbling and deeply gratifying. More than anything, it is a reminder that stories continue to find new audiences long after they are first told. The greatest reward of any restoration is the opportunity for a new generation of viewers to discover English, August and find their own conversation with it.”
Actor Rahul Bose states, “This is incredible news. Shivendra Dungarpur and his team at Film Heritage …read more
Disclaimer : This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by FilmyFriday. Source:: BollywoodHungama
