Matrix Returns to Italian Cinemas in 4K Restoration for Three Days, 27 Years After Release

A 4K restored version of the first Matrix film screens in Italian cinemas from 26 to 28 October, opening the autumn season of the Nexo Studios Back to Cult series. The 1999 film, written and directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski, won four Academy Awards in 2000. Keanu Reeves plays Neo, the programmer and hacker whose discoveries lead him to head a revolt against the machines. The article argues the film's visual force, its aesthetic links to net.art and to Vuk Ćosić's ASCII works, its soundtrack and its themes made it a pop monument, joining Plato's classical philosophy with Eastern thought, psychedelia and the dystopia of Philip K. Dick. Cyberpunk themes had already appeared on screen before 1999, in films including Akira, Tetsuo, The Lawnmower Man, Johnny Mnemonic, Strange Days and Ghost in the Shell, and in animated series such as Aeon Flux and Serial Experiments Lain. The franchise later expanded into Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions, both from 2003, and Matrix Resurrections, shot and co-produced in 2021 by Lana Wachowski alone, plus the animated shorts of The Animatrix, The Matrix Comics and video games for Windows, PlayStation and Xbox. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey follows in the same series from 16 to 18 November.