Known internationally for her divisive, erotic wartime drama The Night Porter (1974), Italian filmmaker Liliana Cavani got her start in biographical television dramas with films about Saint Francis of Assisi and the astronomer Galileo. Her memorable theatrical feature debut is loosely based on Sophocles’s Antigone, a play in which the titular heroine attempts to bury her brother despite laws forbidding it. Set in a totalitarian Milan, The Year of the Cannibals opens on streets strewn with the corpses of rebels, their “dead bodies serv[ing] as an example to prevent more death.” Grieving her brother, whose body lies in front of a bar, Cavani’s modern-day Antigone (Britt Ekland) seeks help to defy the burial ban, finding an ally in a foreigner (Pierre Clémenti). Featuring a score by the incomparable Ennio Morricone and with editing by Sergio Leone regular Nino Baragli, this shocking, no-holds-barred political satire is primed for rediscovery in its newly restored 4K edition.

Programmed and note by K.J. Relth-Miller.

In person: Ashley Clark and director Ngozi Onwurah

Restoration world premiere  

In person: director Ken Kwapis and Debra Spinney

In person: actor Billy Dee Williams