Dev Benegal’s 1994 film English, August is returning to the festival circuit in a newly restored 4K version. The Venice International Film Festival has announced that the restoration will have its World Premiere in the Venice Classics Competition at the festival’s 83rd edition.
The film’s Venice screening comes 31 years after its original release. The restoration has been carried out by Film Heritage Foundation, the not-for-profit organisation led by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur.
Film Heritage Foundation’s third straight Venice premiere
This is the third consecutive year that Film Heritage Foundation has taken a world premiere of one of its restorations to Venice. The organisation previously presented Girish Kasaravalli’s Ghatashraddha in 2024 and Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin in 2025.
For English, August, the Venice presentation will be attended by director Dev Benegal, lead actor Rahul Bose, producer and production designer Anuradha Parikh, and Film Heritage Foundation Director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur.
What English, August is about
English, August is based on Upamanyu Chatterjee’s bestselling 1988 novel. The story follows a young man from an elite, Westernised background who finds himself placed in the unfamiliar bureaucratic world of small-town India.
The film is often associated with its dry humour and its view of post-colonial identity through the character of Agastya Sen. The restored version will now bring the film back to a large-screen festival setting for a new audience.
How the restoration was done
Shivendra Singh Dungarpur said Film Heritage Foundation selected English, August because it fit the organisation’s policy of restoring unusual and artistically important films that are at risk of being lost or surviving only in poor quality versions.
According to Dungarpur, the restoration team did not have access to the original camera and sound negatives, as they no longer survived. The team instead worked with two 35 mm release prints. One print was preserved at the NFDC, National Film Archive of India, and the other was held in the Film Heritage Foundation archive.
The restoration was carried out in consultation with Dev Benegal and cinematographer Anoop Jotwani so that the new version remained close to the film’s original visual intent. For the sound, the team benefited from digital audio tapes that Benegal had preserved, enabling Vikram Joglekar to work on the sound restoration.
Dev Benegal and Rahul Bose react
Dev Benegal said the return of his first feature film to the screen in Venice was “humbling and deeply gratifying.” He described film restoration as the preservation of “a conversation across generations” and said the greatest reward was allowing a new generation of viewers to discover the film.
Rahul Bose called the announcement “incredible news” and credited Shivendra Dungarpur and the Film Heritage Foundation team for the restoration. Referring to the film’s earlier festival journey, Bose said watching it in Venice 31 years after its debut at TIFF would be “surreal” and emotional for him.
Anuradha Parikh also expressed strong emotion about the Venice selection. She said the film had brought hope and joy despite being considered a risky first film at the time, and thanked Venice and Film Heritage Foundation for giving English, August “a new lease of life and love.”
The restored 4K premiere at Venice places English, August back in public view in a carefully preserved form, supported by the people who made the film and by the archive team that restored it.
Source: Bollywood Hungama.
