The partnership already signed in 2024 (see the news) between the Albanian National Film Archive in Tirana and Augustus Color - a historic post-production company based in Rome, with facilities in Calabria and Veneto and boasting major collaborations with the USA, Spain and North Africa - is now expanding with new collaborations already under way with the Cinematheques of North Macedonia and Montenegro, as well as the recent addition of Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Following the initial pilot restoration of the 1989 Albanian film The General of the Dead Army (Kthimi i ushtrisë së vdekur), directed by Dhimiter Anagnosti and based on the debut novel by award-winning writer Ismail Kadare, Augustus Color has also restored, on the Albanian side, Victory Over Death (Ngadhnjim mbi vdekjen) by Gëzim Erebara and Piro Milkani, a 1967 black-and-white film, and Freedom or Death (Liri a vdekje) by Kristaq Mitro and Ibrahim Muçaj, dating from 1979. Now, also thanks to the important support of Albanian and Kosovar private sponsors, the company is working on a new slate of several titles to be restored, including the medium-length film Mimoza, the Spoilt Child (Mimoza Llastica, 1973), directed by Xhanfize Keko and starring, among others, Teuta Doçi, and the film Our Friend Tili (Shoku ynë Tili) by Fehmi Hoshafi (1981), whose 4K restoration was financed by BOSSB.BSS LLC (Baki Wahsh). To further strengthen the Italian-Albanian institutional character of the initiative, the Albanian Language and Literature class at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” (UNIOR), led by professor Blerina Suta, produced the subtitles for Anagnosti’s film, which was the focus of an academic conference in November 2024.

“The path we have started with Albania and, thanks to the word of mouth generated by this partnership, are now undertaking with much of the Balkan region is a form of cultural exchange that is giving us great satisfaction,” said Augusto Pelliccia, manager of Augustus Color. “One of our goals is to support the creation of footage-based films that allow us to explore European history in greater depth. The possibilities for connections between Balkan archives and Italian archives are still largely unexplored territory, and I invite Italian and Balkan directors and producers to further investigate opportunities for collaboration.”

“Regional cooperation among film archives is essential in order to address the challenges posed by rapid technological advancement. Through this partnership, we aim to share expertise, strengthen institutional capacities and support especially smaller archives, like ours, which face greater difficulties in digitalisation processes and in the long-term preservation of audiovisual heritage, while also adopting new artificial intelligence technologies,” added Eljan Tanini, director of the AQSHF in Tirana.

The next restorations with new Macedonian, Montenegrin, Slovenian and Bosnian partners will involve important titles from the respective national cinemas; among these are the early films by multi-award-winning Macedonian director Milcho Manchevski.

In recent months, Augustus Color has also collaborated on the production of new movies: it strongly supported the short film The Interview by Albanian Silver Bear winner Andamion Murataj, shot in Kosovo on film after years of absence of this medium across the Balkan region, the result of a multilateral Kosovar-Albanian-Italian-Spanish co-production; it supported the co-production of Manchevski’s new film Sister Brother Manhole Cover, a co-production between North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Italy, Serbia and Albania with the support of an additional British partner; and it also handled the Italian dubbing and additional post-production work on Leaving Eden, the directorial debut by Albanian producer Genc Permeti, a co-production between Albania, Poland, Italy and Kosovo, recently presented at the Bif&st in Bari by the director, cast and Italian co-producer, Amedeo Pagani.

In addition to restoration and co-production projects, Augustus Color will also participate in the Silver Frame Festival in Srebrenica in July 2026, whose artistic director is Italo-Bosnian filmmaker Ado Hasanovic, awarding a technical prize in post-production services to young local talents. The Italian coordinator who has overseen all of Augustus’s collaborations with the Balkan countries is Ludovico Cantisani, a scholar of cinema and narrative anthropology who has recently co-produced, in addition to the new film by Manchevski, The Greater Good by Rocco Papaleo, a relevant success at the Italian box office.

Thanks to the high-quality digitalisation carried out by Augustus Color, historic works of Balkan cinema will once again become fully accessible to students, academics and researchers, offering new opportunities for analysis of the history and evolution of cinematic language in Balkan countries. Restored images become valuable tools for studying historical and social memory, while cultural and educational institutions can finally reintegrate these films into curricula, retrospectives and enhancement programmes. This is a preservation process that follows rigorous international standards, in which specialised intervention makes it possible to recover time-damaged film materials, transforming them into digital archives that can be accessed without compromising their original integrity.

Within this context, a strategic evolution is taking place that marks the transition from mission to vision for Augustus Color: from the primary mission of preserving and protecting original materials - carried out directly within their countries of origin to safeguard national heritage - to a broader vision based on the dissemination and sharing of audiovisual heritage. Digitalisation thus becomes a democratic tool for access to culture, aimed at building an integrated database of works from Eastern and Southern Europe, capable of connecting archives, institutions and diverse audiences within a single cultural network.