Annouchka De Andrade discusses her long effort to preserve Sarah Maldoror’s film legacy, aided by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation

Sarah Maldoror’s daughter, Annouchka De Andrade, said she has been fighting for years to preserve and protect her mother’s film work, citing the difficulty of keeping prints and later projects in view without sustained institutional support. In an interview focused on the survival of Maldoror’s legacy, De Andrade described the personal and practical obstacles involved in making sure older titles and subsequent works remain accessible to audiences and festivals.

The preservation effort has gained new momentum through a restoration project tied to Maldoror’s earlier career. In 2021, Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation partnered with Cineteca di Bologna to launch a new 4K restoration of Sambizanga, the second feature film directed by Maldoror and described by Deadline as both a film and a political work.

That restoration was presented at Il Cinema Ritrovato, the Bologna-based film festival known for archival screenings and conservation-related programming. Deadline reported that since the 2021 restoration, prints of Sambizanga and Maldoror’s later works have become among the most in-demand properties, underscoring how restoration can translate into broader circulation rather than leaving a film locked inside vaults.

De Andrade’s account places the spotlight on why the stakes are personal as well as cultural. Without preservation and distribution, Maldoror’s body of work risks disappearing from view at the same time as it loses momentum with new generations of viewers, programmers, and scholars. The challenge, as described in the interview, is that preservation requires time, coordination, and resources, and it is often not enough to rely on intermittent interest.

Deadline’s report also frames the Film Foundation’s role as a form of “a little help” for De Andrade and other caretakers of Maldoror’s legacy. By supporting high-resolution restoration and helping enable festival programming, the Film Foundation and Cineteca di Bologna created a pathway for Sambizanga and the surrounding catalog to travel further, reaching venues that prioritize archival quality and historical context.

With Il Cinema Ritrovato presentation already part of the public record and the films’ restored prints proving in demand, De Andrade’s comments point to an ongoing need for sustained stewardship rather than one-time initiatives. The next chapter in preserving Maldoror’s work, as reflected in the reporting, remains tied to what happens after restoration screenings, including continued requests from programmers and the long-term availability of maintained elements.