Restored cut of century-old Napoleon epic to screen at Cannes Film Festival

A film editor at work on the restoration of "Napoleon" by French director Abel Gance at the offices of the Cinematheque Française in Montigny-le-Bretonneux, near Paris, on 6 May 2021. © AFP / STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN

After a marathon restoration effort, visionary French director Abel Gance's silent masterpiece Napoleon will return to the big screen at the Cannes Film Festival in May – nearly 100 years after it was made.

The latest project to restore the 1927 epic began in 2008 when two researchers discovered different versions of it in Gance's archives at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris.