International Film Festival Rotterdam has unveiled its first selections for Cinema Regained, IFFR’s realm for rethinking film history, which will once again present recent restorations and works that offer new perspectives on cinema’s past. Celebrating their world premieres at IFFR 2026 as part of the Cinema Regained programme will be Hungarian avant-garde master Péter Lichter’s The Thing in the Coffin (2026)—an appropriated footage version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula—and Ryan A. White and A.P. Pickle’s doc Mickey & Richard (2026).
Among the restorations featured, audiences will discover Tracing to Expo '70 (1970)—a dazzling mix of musical, travelogue and mystery, which looks at the first World Exposition held in Asia—and Gerald Potterton’s Tiki Tiki (1971), a crazy meta-movie featuring animated monkeys making a live-action Soviet-style fantasy epic. Additional restorations will come from Brazil, Mexico and the Czech Republic, while further attempts at making new sense of film history will be provided by directors from Germany, France and Italy.
Vanja Kaludjercic, Festival Director at IFFR, said: "Cinema Regained reflects the way IFFR approaches cinema: by returning to works and histories that deserve a more attentive place in the conversation. Cinema Regained continues to open up new ways of reading the past, presenting restorations, archival discoveries and experiments that shift how we understand film history. This programme offers audiences a perspective that is informed, curious and grounded in the belief that cinema’s past remains essential to how we read the present".
Source/images: IFFR
