08-02-2025
Traveling film fest brings rare and restored movies to Minnesota this week
Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour is returning to the Twin Cities with a curated run of rare, restored, and recovered films that are rarely, if ever, seen on the big screen.
The festival alights at The Main Cinema from Feb. 14–16, bringing highlights from the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival, held annually in Bologna.
The 2025 program, brought to Minnesota for the third time by the locally-based Archives on Screen, is focused on feminist, documentary, and anti-colonial cinema.
Part of the festival's one-of-a-kind magic is that it isn't just a program dedicated to preserving film history but brings exciting work — and important, often overlooked history — to the screen that would be almost impossible to see otherwise.
Those films include short silent films from cinema's birth, a satanic feminist revenge satire from the Czech new wave (Murdering the Devil), rarely seen films from Iran directed by women (The Sealed Soil, Marjan), and a documentary about the "indignity of being a woman in cinema." All the films will get some context as well, introduced by film historians and archivists.
Here's what will be playing during Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour, with all films playing at The Main Cinema in Minneapolis.
Feb. 14: The Brilliant Biograph: Earliest Moving Images of Europe (1897–1902)
Feb. 14: Murdering the Devil/Vražda ing. Certa (1970), introduced by Alice Lovejoy
Feb. 15: Festa - A trilogy of films by Sarah Maldoror (1979–80), introduced by Joëlle Vitiello
Feb. 15: Be Pretty and Shut Up! (1976), introduced by Morgan Adamson
Feb. 15: Blow for Blow/Coup pour coup (1972), introduced by Sarah Ann Wells
Feb. 16: The Sealed Soil/Khak-e Sar bé Mohr (1977), introduced by Sima Shakhsair
Feb. 16: Marjan (1956), introduced by Farzaneh Ebrahimzadeh Holasu
Feb. 16: Films from The Albert Samama Chikli Project, introduced by Aboubakar Sanogo
Feb. 16: My Grandmother/Chemi bebia (1929), introduced by Michal Kobialka
