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Bandits of Orgosolo + The Lost World

A Sardinian peasant is suspected of murder following an encounter with bandits. In order to survive, he has no option but to turn to banditry himself. Winning multiple awards at the Venice Film Festival, Bandits of Orgosolo continues the traditions of Visconti and De Sica yet with his own style and rhythms Vittorio De Seta musters just as much power as the earlier masters. This release includes De Seta’s remarkable short film programme ‘The Lost World’ comprising his Cannes Film Festival award-winning short film Islands of Fire and others which survey Italy’s poorest communities. Despite awards and plaudits on release these incredible films only now make their English language debut on home video. Upon release, Bandits moved Martin Scorsese to observe: “It was as if De Seta were an anthropologist who spoke with the voice of a poet.”

LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES:

Disc 1: New 4K restoration from the original camera negative by The Film Foundation and Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with Titanus with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation
New interview with cinematographer Luciano Tovoli (2024, 28 mins)
New interview with curator and filmmaker Ehsan Khoshbakht (2024, 11 mins)
Disc 2: The Lost World: A programme of ten restored short films by De Seta, featuring Islands of Fire (1954, 11 mins), The Age of the Swordfish (1954, 11 mins), Golden Parable (1955, 10 mins), Sea Countrymen (1955, 11 mins), Solfatara (1955, 11 mins), Easter in Sicily (1955, 10 mins), Orgosolo’s Shepherds (1958, 11 mins), Fishing Boats (1959, 11 mins), A Day in Barbagia (1958, 11 mins), The Forgotten (1959, 21 mins), restored by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.
Archival interview with Vittorio De Seta (2008, 18 mins)
New interview with curator and filmmaker Ehsan Khoshbakht (2024, 21 mins)
Trailer
Optional English subtitles
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Filippo Di Battista
Limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Roberto Curti
Limited Edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings

So exicted for this one. Great when you see a title, think that is right up another label's alley, and then are rewarded in only a few months' time!

Worth pointing out that the disc with the shorts is exclusive to the UK, and the US release will not contain it.

This is one of those world cinema hits that was huge at the time and then never really cemented into the canon. I must confess I wasn’t too impressed when I watched it recently, but I think many here will enjoy it

I found it to be effective as something of a rural noir and thought the restoration had potential to look great on blu when I saw it theatrically. Looking forward to the Khoshbakht interviews especially.

The disc of shorts already makes this release of the year top ten for me. I was very impressed when I watched them on the Criterion Channel and had never heard of De Seta before. A big reason why I love these Film Foundation restorations so much too.

Bummed that the US edition won't have the shorts. As a US subscriber I might have to double dip on this.

I think the first half of 2024 is better than the at-the-time utterly brilliant first half of 2023 for Radiance, and this release certainly looks to be one of their very best releases.

TMDaines wrote: Wed Mar 06, 2024 12:21 pmWorth pointing out that the disc with the shorts is exclusive to the UK, and the US release will not contain it.

Is this the first time Radiance has done this?

As Fran has explained elsewhere, the US rights for the shorts are with Criterion, hence why the US release is only the feature film disc.

It's the first time they've had to remove a disc, but technically they could only release one of three features that were part of their World Noir Vol. 1 set, so they've been blocked from releasing discs before. Silver lining is that the UK release of this is Region Free, so those who want the shorts on disc can always import (I can't imagine Criterion will do anything with them - unless they release a different De Seta film and include them, I suppose).

Radiance confirmed on Twitter/X that both discs in the set are region-free

the only pain point here I could see is if you're a US subscriber and you're getting the edition without the shorts, when you can readily pick up the region free edition from Orbit/Diabolik/etc. gonna be interesting to see

either way this is a brilliant release, I've had my eyes on these for awhile (especially after working through a good bit of Italian movies) and am glad to see more Italian movies that aren't just genre stuff (though I will be trying Cosa Nostra and Tony Arzenta), as I enjoyed The Sunday Woman and look forward to Misunderstood. as said above, I can't imagine Criterion doing much with this, or at least at the price Radiance is

I thought this was an excellent film: neo-realism by way of Bresson, with all the sentimentality stripped away. And the photography is magnificent. The vividly evoked Sardinian landscape serves as second lead, and De Seta's way of juxtaposing extreme long shots with extreme close-ups within sequences has some of the unsettling vitality of Pasolini, but within a more classical context.

The shorts are excellent, but the length of the feature gives De Seta the chance to excel in so many more dimensions (working with characters and narrative, building and releasing tension etc.) The shorts work really well as a programme, because they all follow a very similar model, in being focused on a single event or activity (a fishing expedition, a harvest, a festival) but with social context crammed in all around it offering a portrait of the local culture. The films are all around ten minutes and most of them follow a dawn-to-dusk structure, so the collection is extremely modular and they play more as chapters of a larger project than a random collection of shorts.

I totally concur with what zedz said. I thought Orgosolo was superb, as if Bresson had made Bicycle Thieves. The lead has a striking, expressive face reminiscent of Henry Fonda in Grapes of Wrath, and the kid's performance is poignant without resorting to mugging or theatrics. When you think that this, Accatone, and Il Posto all premiered at the 1961 Venice Film Festival, it almost seems like the birth of a second wave of neorealism—which I think is something Ehsan Khoshbakht says in his interview on the disc. But Chronicle of a Summer, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Shirley Clarke's The Connection, and Kent Mackenzie's The Exiles also showed at the festival, giving the sense of an international movement. One could also include Melville's Léon Morin, Priest in the conversation, standing as it does in stark contrast to the high postmodernism of the festival's top prizewinner Last Year at Marienbad, though Melville was always just doing his own thing.

The location photography is indeed magnificent, but not only for the stark scenery. de Seta's framing and camera movements are striking without being showy, reminding me a little of Jan Němec's Diamonds of the Night. There isn't much to say about the narrative, being a simple story of a little bit of trouble leading to a whole lot of trouble, but the film is poetic in its simplicity.

If anyone stateside is curious but doesn't want to commit to a blind buy, the film is on Tubi. Of course, I recommend the Blu-ray to get the most out of the cinematography, to get the short films and informative interviews, and to support our friends at Radiance!

Matt wrote: Tue Nov 18, 2025 7:22 am If anyone stateside is curious but doesn't want to commit to a blind buy, the film is on Tubi. Of course, I recommend the Blu-ray to get the most out of the cinematography, to get the short films and informative interviews, and to support our friends at Radiance!

Note: Purchasers of the US release will only get the main film, and not the short films, as those are licensed to Criterion in the US. You have to get the UK release for those (if it’s still in print).

However, you can watch the short films and some supplemental material on De Seta on the Criterion Channel. They’ve been on there for a while, so may be part of the permanent Collection.

The UK edition is still available on OrbitDVD and Diabolik at just $7 more than the feature-only US version. Also available on Amazon US but for more $$