Exactly 47 years after itwas made, the English-language version of Jacques Tati's 1958 film, MonOncle, is receiving its world premiere in the Berlinale's retrospectivetoday.

This is not a dubbed versionof the French original, but a film that was shot separately in English, withthe same actors. It contains sequences which are not in the French versionwhich audiences have been watching for the last half-century.

The English language versionwas never released commercially. It has been missing, presumed lost, for manyyears, but was re-discovered in 2004 in the Archive de Film Francais. Thearchivists there were unaware that the film was in their possession.

"You will see it as youhave never seen it before," Jerome Deschamps (who has masterminded the recoveryand restoration of the film) said.

Mon Oncle, which won the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1958, islargely set against the backdrop of an ultra-modernist, Le Corbusier-stylehouse where Monsieur Hulot (Tati) causes chaos.

Tati loathed poor qualitydubbing and anything else which distracted audiences from what he called"the overall unity" of his films. Hence the decision to shoot theseparate English version.