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| La Dérive |
A selection of personal tips, recommendations, and favourite discoveries from the more than 500 films awaiting you at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026.
1
La Dérive
Dir: Paula Delsol | France, 1964
Biased historiography haS long buried the work of this suppressed member of the French New Wave, who, alongside Agnès Varda, was one of the movement’s few female directors. Time to rediscover this favourite of Godard and Truffaut.
2
He Ran All the Way
Dir: John Berry | USA, 1951
The soon-to-be-blacklisted and exiled Berry’s final American film until the 1970s, and one of the most sobering film noirs ever to emerge from Hollywood, featuring John Garfield’s final performance before his early, tragic death. The essential blacklist film.
3
The Devils
Dir: Ken Russell | UK, 1971
A brand-new 35mm print of the uncensored director’s cut of one of the most controversial films in cinema history. A mad film, and one of Russell’s finest – in fact, one of the few that still fully works.
4
Pont de Varsòvia
Dir: Pere Portabella | Spain, 1989
A film that is at once demanding and breathtaking, made by the militant, clandestine, anarchic master of Spanish cinema after a long hiatus during which he became a senator following Franco’s death. It features an extraordinary opera sequence set in Barcelona’s fish market, where shark-like creatures are used to evoke pietà.
5
Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed [Adventures of Prince Ahmad]
Dir: Lotte Reiniger | Germany, 1926
6
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Dir: Ed Wood | USA, 1957
“The worst film ever made,” presented from a mint-condition newly struck BFI 35mm print. On celluloid it'll look even worse, which makes it all the better.
7
Dayereh-ye Mina [The Cycle]
Dir: Dariush Mehrjui | Iran, 1974
This bleak masterpiece by Mehrjui about blood dealers makes even Pasolini seem tender and soft.
A Bucket of Blood
Dir: Roger Corman | USA, 1959
An anti-Beat-culture classic and one of Corman’s most profound films about shallowness.
9
A Man on the Beach
Dir: Joseph Losey | UK, 1955
Losey’s nearly unseen Hammer-produced psychological crime short, shot in widescreen and Eastmancolor, distills many of the director’s key themes into a running time of just half an hour. I had seen the film before, but when I watched this brilliant restoration I realised I had not truly seen it at all.
10
Krynytsya dlya sprahlykh [A Spring for the Thirsty]
Dir: Yuri Ilyenko | USSR/Ukraine, 1965
The festival’s purest poem.
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