Done Quixote? Film archivists on quest to finish Orson Welles passion project

Team hope 30 of hours of footage held by three countries will be enough to bring to life film-maker’s vision

More than 70 years after he shot the first few frames, Orson Welles’s ambitious project to put Don Quixote on the big screen may finally be completed thanks to a consortium of European film archivists.

Oja Kodar, the American film-maker’s partner and collaborator, has given her blessing to the project led by archives in France, Spain and Italy, along with the Munich film museum, to produce a coherent film out of 30 hours of footage scattered among them.