A new digital restoration of Federico Fellini's La Strada, 60 years after it won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, reminds us why it won over critics and audiences, writes Danielle Hipkins, an academic specializing in Italian language and film. Film buffs will have noted the recent death of the great scholar of Italian cinema, Peter Bondanella, whose work on Federico Fellini helped to define him as “one of cinema’s greatest auteurs”.

Bondanella would have enjoyed the new digital restoration of La Strada, Fellini’s fourth film, which has just been restored and released by Studiocanal/Independent Cinema Office. Revisiting the film more than 60 years after it won the first Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in the breathtakingly clarity of its digital restoration reminds us why its tender simplicity stole the hearts of both critics and audiences.