The Memory of Cinema section of LEFFEST’26 invites audiences to rediscover four landmark works in cinema history, now presented in restored 4K prints. From 6 to 15 November, the festival offers a journey across different periods and cinematic traditions, revisiting films whose aesthetic and political force remains undiminished.
Directed by Alexander Kluge, Yesterday Girl (Abschied von gestern, 1966) is a landmark of New German Cinema, following a young woman as she confronts the social and political contradictions of post-war Germany. In My Brother’s Wedding (1983), Charles Burnett portrays the tensions within a family and a community in an African American neighbourhood in Los Angeles. The director, who is part of the Official Competition jury, will be present at the screening, on 15 November, at 2 pm, at Cinema Medeia Nimas.
The section also features Paula Delsol’s The Drifting (1964), which follows a young woman in her search for autonomy and freedom, and Orson Welles’s The Stranger (1945), a film that intertwines suspense with the legacy of Nazism. Frédéric Bonnaud, director of the Cinémathèque française, will be present at the screening, on 14 November, at 6:30pm, at Cinema Medeia Nimas.
Through these four works, Memory of Cinema reaffirms the importance of film restoration and preservation, bringing back to the big screen films that continue to speak to the present.