European film archives plan to complete Orson Welles’s unfinished Don Quixote project using decades of stored footage

Film archivists across Europe are working to complete an unfinished Orson Welles project intended to adapt Don Quixote for the big screen, a plan described in a report published June 29. The initiative centers on footage Welles shot more than 70 years ago, along with additional material held by archives in multiple countries, according to The Guardian.

The project’s organizers say the remaining work depends on roughly 30 hours of footage believed to be distributed among three countries. They say that amount, when assembled and prepared for production, would be sufficient to bring Welles’s vision to a finished film, despite the decades-long delay since he shot the first few frames.

Oja Kodar, an American filmmaker who worked with Welles and served as his partner and collaborator, has given her blessing to the project, The Guardian reported. The permission is described as a key factor for the archivists and production team attempting to translate unfinished, dispersed material into a completed work intended for release to audiences.

While the report frames the effort as a completion endeavor rather than a new interpretation, it also underscores the practical challenges involved in using older film elements. The archivists are effectively managing questions of preservation and reconstruction, including how disparate reels and segments can be coordinated into a single narrative and production-ready format.

The Guardian’s account describes the consortium as a multi-country effort among film archives, reflecting the reality that rare, aging materials can remain under the stewardship of different institutions even when a creator’s overall project is unfinished. The team’s stated goal is to complete the film by building from what has been preserved, not by replacing the original footage.

The timeline for the work and the exact status of production decisions were not fully detailed in the June 29 report, and it was not clear from the summary how quickly assembled footage would move into post-production. The consortium’s progress, however, hinges on the practical availability of the 30 hours of material and on the consortium’s ability to secure access, preservation work, and the technical steps needed to finalize the project.

As the completion effort develops, the project also raises institutional questions familiar to archival productions, including rights and stewardship responsibilities for historical film assets, and how film archives coordinate across borders to meet preservation standards while making material viewable to the public. For audiences and researchers, the potential release would mark a rare, late-life turn for a major creator’s long-anticipated vision, if the assembled material can be translated into a finished film as planned.