The silent film classic Metropolis has been re-released with 30 minutes of restored footage that was thought lost since the 1920’s. It is showing in select theaters around the US and Canada and will be available on DVD/Blu-ray later this year. It will be playing at San Francisco’s Castro Theater from September 25-29.

Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism. The film was produced in the Babelsberg Studios by Universum Film A.G. (UFA). The most expensive silent film ever made, it cost approximately 5 million Reichsmark.

Metropolis is the original large scale science fiction film and has had incredible influence on later films in the genre like Star Wars, Brazil, and Blade Runner. The long lost footage was found 2 years ago in Argentina and required significant restoration before it re-debuted earlier this year in Berlin.