New York Film Festival Sets Revivals Lineup With Ken Russell’s ‘The Devils’, Powell & Pressburger’s ‘Gone To Earth’

The New York Film Festival has unveiled its lineup of revivals, films that that have been restored, preserved or digitally remastered, including 12 features and two programs of shorts.

The Devils, Ken Russell’s controversial 1971 work is newly restored and featuring originally censored material. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1950 Technicolor work Gone to Earth, which had been drastically re-edited by producer David O. Selznick, was restored in a version overseen by Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker.

Warner Bros.’s new boutique label, Clockwork, will release The Devils in cinemas October 16, the first time Russell’s complete version will screen in theaters. 

Other restoration world premieres include Allen Fong’s Just Like Weather, Barbara Hammer’s Nitrate Kisses, and Fred Camper’s Suicide Note.

Rediscoveries from the 1980s include Report to Mother, the final feature by South India filmmaker John Abraham; In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, Pradip Krishen’s coming-of-age story about a Delhi architecture student, written by a young Arundhati Roy; and Hong Kong filmmaker Allen Fong’s Just Like Weather.

Three of this year’s Revivals selections are essential, rarely screened works of the 1960s, when international narrative cinema was at its boldest and most experimental, including

Paula Delsol’s 1964 character study The Drift, a rare feminist film of the French New Wave; Ukrainian filmmaker Yuri Ilyenko’s 1965 feature A Well for the Thirsty, suppressed by Soviet authorities, and Alexander Kluge’s 1966 New German Cinema Yesterday Girl were all restored from the original 35mm camera negatives.

Barbara Hammer’s 1992 Nitrate Kisses and Fred Camper’s 1970s New York diary Suicide Note represent American experimental filmmaking

The lineup also features a near-complete retrospective of Armenian filmmaker Artavazd Pelechian, screening in two programs. Pelechian, 88, was honored as a special guest at Cannes Classics.

NYFF’s 64^th edition runs September 25 through October 12. See the Main Slate, Spotlight and Currents selections.

Revivals lineup with festival descriptions:

The Devils (Ken Russell)

The Drift (Paula Delsol)

Gone to Earth (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)

Goodbye South, Goodbye (Hou Hsiao-hsien)

In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (Pradip Krishen)

L’innocente (Luchino Visconti)

Just Like Weather (Allen Fong)

Nitrate Kisses (Barbara Hammer)

Report to Mother (John Abraham)

Suicide Note (Fred Camper)

A Well for the Thirsty (Yuri Ilyenko)

Yesterday Girl (Alexander Kluge)

Pelechian Project Program 1 (Artavazd Pelechian)

Mountain Patrol

Land of the People

We

The Seasons

Pelechian Project Program 2 (Artavazd Pelechian)

The Beginning

Our Century

The End

Life

64th New York Film Festival Revivals Films and Descriptions

The Devils

Ken Russell, 1971, U.K., 35mm, 114m

North American Premiere of Newly Restored 35mm Print

Ken Russell’s controversial adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun is at long last available in its full, provocative splendor. This new restoration thrillingly incorporates material that was originally censored—footage that Russell deemed some of the best and most political work of his career. A young Derek Jarman designed the sets that house this story of a vengeful nun (Vanessa Redgrave) who accuses a priest (Oliver Reed) of collaborating with the devil, resulting in the apparent possession of an entire convent. A fearless account of state and church corruption, The Devils mixes graphic sexual imagery with religious iconography in an unforgettable spectacle that could only issue from the mind of Ken Russell. Following its NYFF64 premiere, The Devils will open on 35mm for a one-week engagement beginning October 16 at Film at Lincoln Center. A Warner Bros. Clockwork release.

New 4K restoration from the original camera negative of Ken Russell’s definitive vision of The Devils, using his privately constructed 2004 edit. Audio remastered from original English Composite 35mm Mag Film transferred at 96kHz, plus other original elements as needed. Picture and sound restoration performed by Warner Bros. Post Production Creative Services, Water Tower Color, and Warner Bros. Sound.

The Drift / La dérive

Paula Delsol, 1964, France, 83m

French with English subtitles

North American Premiere of New 4K Restoration

An underseen and criminally overlooked film of the Nouvelle Vague, Paula Delfsol’s sensual, meandering work of modernistic character study follows Jacquie (Jacqueline Vandal), a young woman who leaves her family to hit the road with her guitarist lover, only for him to abandon her. As she proceeds to encounter a succession of men, Delsol uses Jacquie’s experiences to reflect on the state of women’s liberation in 1960s France. In her sole feature film, Delsol filled nearly every role behind the camera, and though it fell into obscurity for decades following its Cannes premiere, the film today appears to us as a bold and innovative feminist contribution to the notorious boys’ club that was the Nouvelle Vague. A Janus Films release.

Restored in 4K in 2026 by La Cinémathèque française in collaboration with the CNC, and with the support of the Neuflize OBC Foundation. Restored at the TransPerfect Media laboratory from the 35mm image and sound negatives.

Gone to Earth

Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1950, U.K., 111m

World Premiere of New 4K Restoration

For many years, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s evocative ode to Shropshire fell victim to the meddling hands of producer David O. Selznick, who drastically re-edited the film, releasing it as The Wild Heart in 1952. Selznick made his changes directly onto the negative, making it exceedingly difficult to reconstruct Powell and Pressburger’s original version. Overseen by Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker, and making use of positive materials held at the British Film Institute, as well as the film’s tattered negative, this restoration miraculously brings Powell and Pressburger’s Technicolor version of Mary Webb’s novel back to life. Jennifer Jones stars as the free-spirited, nature-loving Hazel Woodus, a woman who refuses to bow down to her father (Esmond Knight), the spiritual clergyman (Cyril Cusack) to whom she is betrothed, or the reckless squire (David Farrar) who desires her. Jones gives a career-best performance in The Archers’ glorious tribute to the otherworldly landscapes where Powell’s father grew up. A Walt Disney Company release.

Restored in 2026 by Walt Disney Studios, in association with The Film Foundation, with the participation of the British Film Institute, The George Eastman Museum, The Museum of Modern Art. Image Restoration: Cineric, Inc. Audio Restoration: Audio Mechanics. Supervised by Thelma Schoonmaker, with special thanks to Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.

The NYFF64 screening of Gone to Earth is presented in partnership with Rolex.

Goodbye South, Goodbye / 南國再見,南國

Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1996, Taiwan, 120m

Taiwanese Hokkien and Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles

North American Premiere of New 4K Restoration

Arriving midway through Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 1990s run of unassailable masterpieces, Goodbye South, Goodbye is one of his great contemporary films, and a definitive generational portrait, following the schemes and plots of a group of small-time gangsters in the age of get-rich-quick late-capitalism. As Gao (Jack Kao) aims to establish a gambling ring in Pingxi with a friend and accomplice, Gao’s girlfriend quickly grows wary of the new faces that enter his life as a result. A typically mesmerizing study of the effects of modernization on the lives of everyday Taiwanese, cycling between movement and stasis, Goodbye South, Goodbye remains one of Hou’s most sociologically insightful works, and it features several of his most bravura long takes in a career replete with them. A Janus Films release.

4K scanned from the 35mm original camera negative preserved at the National Film Archive of Japan, followed by picture restoration and color grading. Sound digitized from the optical magnetic sound track (cinetape) and audio-restored/remastered.

In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones

Pradip Krishen, 1989, India, 112m

North American Premiere of New 4K Restoration

Based on a screenplay by a then-28-year-old Arundhati Roy, In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones at first appears to be a modest and playful depiction of student life in the 1970s. But Roy’s story of Annie (Arjun Raina), a New Delhi architecture student caught in a vicious cycle of failing and repeating his studies, gradually reveals itself as a sharp and poignant portrayal of youth, deftly poised between hope and cynicism. (Roy herself quietly steals the show in her onscreen turn as Radha, Annie’s girlfriend and an independent young woman proud of her nonconformist ways.) Directed by Roy’s husband Pradip Krishen and based on her own university experiences, the English-language film was originally made for television and circulated exclusively on VHS for many years. This new restoration, which made use of the 16mm camera negative, as well as a 35mm print, finally brings this deeply pleasurable film to the big screen where it belongs.

Restored in 4K by Film Heritage Foundation at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with the director Pradip Krishen. Funding provided by Film Heritage Foundation. Restored using the best surviving elements: 16mm original camera negative and sound negative preserved at the NFDC-National Film Archive of India and 35mm release print preserved at Film Heritage Foundation.

L’innocente / The Innocent

Luchino Visconti, 1976, Italy/France, 129m

Italian with English subtitles

North American Premiere of New 4K Restoration

In his final film, Luchino Visconti offers one of his most cutting variations on his lifelong theme: the moral decay of the soul-sick aristocracy. Based on a novel by the proto-fascist sensualist Gabriele d’Annunzio, this poison-pill melodrama concerns a callously self-absorbed nobleman (Giancarlo Giannini) whose liberal views on marriage extend only as far as his own extramarital affairs. When his tormented wife (Laura Antonelli) pursues a dalliance with a writer, the full monstrosity of his chauvinism is unleashed. Working with a late-career rigor, Visconti returns one last time to the luxuriant, red-velvet world of the 19th century, stripping away operatic excess in favor of a supremely controlled emotional intensity. A Film Movement release.

New digital transfer created in 4K resolution on an Arriscan film scanner from the original camera negative by Cinelab Service in Italy. All video and audio restoration done at Heavenly Movie Corporation by Sebastian Alvarez del Castillo.

Just Like Weather / 美國心

Allen Fong, 1986, Hong Kong, 95m

Cantonese and English with English subtitles

World Premiere of New 4K Restoration

Allen Fong’s fascinating, ahead-of-its-time third feature follows a couple from Hong Kong as they navigate domestic trials and tribulations, both real and staged, before eventually heading to the United States in search of a potential better future amid the social and political malaise of their generation. They soon discover, like many immigrants before and since, that the U.S. isn’t quite the promised land of abundant opportunity. Fong’s use of non-actors and documentary techniques in a fictional context—or perhaps fictional techniques in a documentary context?—at times recalls the work of Abbas Kiarostami, imbuing quotidian concerns with a powerful metaphysical and political resonance. The result is a signature work of the Hong Kong New Wave, and one of the great films about married life.

Restored in 4K by M+, Hong Kong in 2026. The restoration was made using the original 16mm picture negative, the 35mm reversal intermediate, and the 35mm optical sound negative preserved at the Hong Kong Film Archive, Leisure and Cultural Services Department. The restoration was undertaken at L’Immagine Ritrovata. Special thanks to George Chang. Just Like Weather is one of the films under “M+ Restored,” an initiative supported by CHANEL.

Nitrate Kisses

Barbara Hammer, 1992, U.S., 67m

World Premiere of New 4K Restoration

Barbara Hammer’s pioneering first feature weaves together a liberating portrait of queer sexuality through a dizzying mix of archival and original footage: interviews, sexual imagery, and excerpts of documentary and narrative films from the 1930s, including the first gay film from the U.S., James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber’s Lot in Sodom (1933). Hammer’s editing juxtapoises contrasting images and sounds and brings past and present into an intimate and unexpected dialogue. With sections that explore, among other matters, the sexuality of American author Willa Cather and the status of lesbians in the Third Reich, Hammer’s film boldly pulls back the curtain on the queer experience. A Strand Releasing release.

Restored by BB Optics (Mackenzie Lukenbill, Restoration Technician). Supported by Frameline and The Estate of Barbara Hammer. Restoration overseen by Brydie O’Connor.

Report to Mother / Amma Ariyan

John Abraham, 1986, India, 115m

Malayalam with English subtitles

U.S. Premiere of New 4K Restoration

The final feature by legendary Malayalam filmmaker John Abraham, Report to Mother is an astonishing work of political commitment and aesthetic experimentation. The first production of the Odessa Collective, which raised funds by screening films and performing in villages with the aim of creating a true “people’s cinema,” the film follows Purushan (Joy Mathew), who discovers a dead body while en route to Delhi and sets out to inform the mother of the deceased of his apparent fate, while gathering an eclectic group of companions along the way. Indelibly capturing the political tumult of 1970s Kerala in stark black and white, Report to Mother has endured as one of South Indian cinema’s most essential works.

Restored by Film Heritage Foundation at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory and Digital Film Restore Pvt. Ltd. in association with Odessa Collective with special thanks to cinematographer Venu ISC and editor Bina Paul. Funding provided by Film Heritage Foundation. Restored in 4K from one of the only two surviving prints: the first-generation 35mm release print preserved at the NFDC-National Film Archive of India.

Suicide Note

Fred Camper, 1976–1984, U.S., 16mm, 110m

Silent with no subtitles

World Premiere of New Restoration

Shot largely in New York in the late 1970s, and seldom screened publicly, this rare film from critic and artist Fred Camper is a fragmentary, diaristic work, capturing a cluttered and melancholic world on Super 8 reversal film. Haunted by its title, the film is at once intimate and opaque, rhapsodic and withdrawn, as its tremulous images attempt to reckon with the fleeting beauty of crowds, shop windows, domestic interiors, art exhibitions, and a panoptic view of New York City taken from the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Each screening of the film, which unfolds across 10 sections, is different from the last: the reels that make up its eighth section are determined by way of a chance operation performed before each projection. Previously known as SN, the film has now been given its full title (conceived after Camper’s stepfather took his own life and left no note), to coincide with this essential new restoration.

Suicide Note has been restored by Chicago Film Society with the support of the National Film Preservation Foundation and Big Creek Cooperative. Picture Restoration: BB Optics; 4K Scan and Laboratory Services: Colorlab.

A Well for the Thirsty / Криниця для спраглих

Yuri Ilyenko, 1965/1987, Ukraine/USSR, 71m

Ukrainian with English subtitles

North American Premiere of New 4K Restoration

Completed in 1965 but suppressed by Soviet authorities until its eventual release amid the onset of perestroikain 1987, Yuri Ilyenko’s debut feature is a cryptic, visionary work that helped establish the Ukrainian poetic cinema movement (alongside Sergei Parajanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, on which Ilyenko served as cinematographer). Almost entirely dialogue-free, A Well for the Thirsty paints the interiority of Levko (Dmytro Miliutenko), an old peasant who lives on the perimeter of a desert; his family members are all dead or otherwise gone, and as he makes preparations for his own inevitable death, he is beset by memories and apparitions from throughout his life. With its radical sound design and striking symbolist imagery, A Well for the Thirsty is a singular achievement that announced Ilyenko as a worthy heir of Alexander Dovzhenko.

Restored from the 35mm original camera negative, held at Oleksandr Dovzhenko Centre, Kyiv. Scanned by Lukasz Ceranka (Fixafilm) and Oleksandr Bertman (Oleksandr Dovzhenko Centre), restored with funding by Fixafilm and the Polish Film Institute, graded with reference to an archival print loaned by the Dovzhenko Centre. Copyright holder: Dovzhenko Film Studio. Special thanks to Olena Honcharuk, Daniel Bird, Pylyp Illienko, Andriy Donchyk, CEO of Dovzhenko Film Studio.

Yesterday Girl / Abschied von gestern

Alexander Kluge, 1966, West Germany, 88m

German with English subtitles

North American Premiere of New 4K Restoration

One of the foundational films of the New German Cinema, the debut feature by the polymath artist and writer Alexander Kluge (who died in March 2026 at the age of 94) remains a radical and generative work that reimagines the formal conventions of narrative cinema in pursuit of a new kind of film, one that would better reflect the political realities of life in Germany 20 years after the fall of the Third Reich. Nominally, the plot concerns Anita G. (Alexandra Kluge, the director’s sister), a young East German woman acclimating to her new life on the other side of the wall. But Kluge adorns her meandering odyssey with a wealth of intertitles, references, citations, and documentary footage, yielding an allusive and polyvocal work about which one can say, simply, that there was a German cinema before Yesterday Girl and a German cinema after it.

Restoration undertaken by Kairos-Film and Reitz-Medien under the supervision of Alexander Kluge. 4K scanning from the original 35mm negative performed at ARRI Film & TV München.

Pelechian Project

Long a figure of cultish devotion but still too little known in the U.S., the Armenian filmmaker Artavazd Pelechian once said, while speaking to Jean-Luc Godard, that “film relies on three factors: space, time, and real movement.” Combining archival and original footage, and blurring the categories of documentary essay and the poetic avant-garde, Pelechian’s visionary works revolve around a grand recurring theme of humankind’s tumultuous relationship to the natural world. A spiritual and theoretical descendant of great Soviet filmmakers like Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein, Pelechian evolved their pioneering editing techniques into a method he termed “distance montage,” which, instead of forging linear associations, sought to create “a magnetic field around the film.” The films in these two programs—restored under the supervision of Pelechian, now 88—span more than three decades and constitute a near-complete survey of his extraordinary body of work.

Restoration of Artavazd Pelechian’s films launched by Coproduction Office in partnership with Cineteca di Bologna under the director’s supervision. Best available elements selected by the director and scanned in 4K at the Public Television Company of Armenia. Restoration and color grading carried out by L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory. In association with Cinema Foundation of Armenia, Public Television Company of Armenia, VGIK. Additional support by ZDF/ARTE, ArMa Media Production LLC, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Pelechian Project Program 1

Artavazd Pelechian, 1964–1975, USSR/Armenia, 79m

Mountain Patrol / Լեռնային պարեկներ

1964, 10m

North American Premiere of New 4K Restoration

Made at the legendary Russian film school VGIK while Pelechian was a student, this early short film shows the daily labor of men tasked with clearing the way for train passage through the Armenian mountains.

Land of the People / Մարդկանց երկիրը

1966, 11m

U.S. Premiere of New 4K Restoration

A striking portrait of labor and human thought, bookended by a roving visual meditation on Rodin’s “The Thinker.”

We / Մենք

1969, 27m

U.S. Premiere of New 4K Restoration

The question of Armenian identity and the very fate of the Armenian people seem to be at stake in this kinetic, formally convulsive work.

The Seasons / Տարվա եղանակները

1975, 31m

U.S. Premiere of New 4K Restoration

In what is often considered Pelechian’s magnum opus, the ancient antagonism of nature and humanity plays out in a depiction of a remote farming community, energetically scored with Armenian folk music and Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

Pelechian Project Program 2

Artavazd Pelechian, 1967–1993, USSR/Armenia, 77m

The Beginning

1967, 9m

U.S. Premiere of New 4K Restoration

The October Revolution of 1917 comes to life through Pelechian’s unique stuttering montage in this analytical, staccato counterpoint to Eisenstein’s October.

Our Century

1982, 52m

North American Premiere of New 4K Restoration

A jarring, provocative work alternating between images of a rocket launch and scenes of failed experiments in aviation, Our Century is, in Pelechian’s words, “a film about us, about me, about what I’m striving for, what we’re all striving for, every person, humanity. And this desire to ascend, to transcend, is literally embodied in the cosmonauts.”

The End

1992, 9m

U.S. Premiere of New 4K Restoration

A staggering meditation on landscapes and travel, The End captures a train ride from Moscow to Yerevan, rendered by Pelechian as a kind of hymn outside of time, conjured through the mystery of the human face, the rumbling of mechanized transport, and the revelatory play of light. Note: The End will also screen in Currents Program 2: The Visible Invisible.

Life

1993, 7m

North American Premiere of New 4K Restoration

A rare color film for Pelechian, in which a woman’s face movingly fills the frame as she gives birth.