The new 4-hour director’s cut of Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves is set to premiere at the Locarno Film Festival in 2026.

      While there’s no update on the distribution of Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2, which we reviewed two years ago following its Venice premiere, another of Kevin Costner's grand westerns is being revitalized. The Locarno Film Festival revealed today that a 4K restoration of Costner's extended version of Dances with Wolves—completed by the Zurich-based lab Cinegrell in partnership with the Locarno Film Festival through its Locarno Heritage initiative and its international sales representative, K5 International—will debut on August 7.

      This nearly four-hour film, featuring approximately 30 minutes of never-before-seen content, is described as “Costner’s western epic, which garnered seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director, played a crucial role in reshaping the western genre in the early 1990s and highlighted the historical struggles of Indigenous peoples in America. Screened on the grand canvas of the Piazza Grande, this extended edition—encompassing more than half an hour of previously unseen footage—provides audiences with the opportunity to experience Costner’s expansive masterpiece as the director originally envisioned.”

      Additionally, the festival states that “Safi Faye’s Letter from My Village (Kaddu Beykat, 1975), the winner of the 2025 Heritage Restoration Contest, has also been newly restored by Cinegrell in collaboration with the Locarno Film Festival and its rights holder, Arsenal Filminstitut. Recognized as the first feature film directed by a woman from Sub-Saharan Africa to achieve commercial distribution, Letter from My Village takes place in the Serer region of rural Senegal and chronicles a young couple whose engagement is disrupted by drought and the harsh realities of village life. This significant blend of documentary and fiction will have its restored version premiered at the festival.”

      Giona A. Nazzaro, Artistic Director, remarked, “The Locarno Film Festival has a deep historical connection to cinema that spans all eras and styles. From the tradition of significant, innovative retrospectives—enriched each year with fresh and exciting offerings—to the internationally recognized restorations within Locarno Heritage, the festival has cultivated a meaningful and rich dialogue both with universally celebrated masterpieces and with those cinematic chapters that are still to be discovered or preserved. From Kevin Costner to Safi Faye, the Locarno Film Festival engages with the history of cinema while looking toward new generations and future audiences, who are preparing today to face the challenges brought by new technologies.”

      The press release continues below.

      As part of the festival's enduring collaboration with the Cinémathèque suisse, two films by Swiss experimental filmmaker Isa Hesse-Rabinovitch—Sirenen-Eiland (1981) and Geister und Gäste (1989)—will be included in the program under the section Cinéma Suisse Redécouvert, which highlights rediscovered Swiss cinema. Hesse-Rabinovitch, a longtime illustrator and graphic artist, transitioned to filmmaking at age fifty, creating a diverse body of work. Notably, the screenings in Locarno, organized in conjunction with the Museum Hermann Hesse in Montagnola, represent the beginning of a long-term project to reinterpret and showcase Hesse-Rabinovitch’s work, developed by the Cinémathèque suisse in partnership with the University of Zurich.

      The Locarno Film Festival is collaborating with mudac – the Cantonal Museum of Design and Contemporary Applied Arts at the Plateforme 10 arts district, to honor Isao Takahata's work and legacy, a co-founder of Studio Ghibli and a master in animation. At Locarno79, the program will feature Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru No Haka, 1988) as a tribute to the filmmaker on Friday, August 7, presented by his son, Kosuke Takahata, and in partnership with mudac, Plateforme 10. Isao Takahata was present in Locarno in 2009 to receive an Honorary Leopard.

      In a special centenary tribute, Histoire(s) du Cinéma will showcase Roger Corman’s final directorial effort, Frankenstein Unbound (1990), with John Hurt, Raúl Juliá, and Bridget Fonda, a striking blend of science fiction and Gothic horror that creatively reinterprets the Frankenstein legend for the late twentieth century. The Locarno screening presents an excellent opportunity to celebrate the legacy of an audacious and remarkably prolific producer-director, who has previously been honored in Locarno.

      The complete official selection for Locarno79 will be revealed at the press conference on Thursday, July 9, 2026.

      The 79th Locarno Film Festival is scheduled for August 5-15, 2026.