Decades of unseen footage will finally complete this legendary Orson Welles masterpiece

Film archives are pulling back the curtain to provide footage of an unfinished Orson Welles piece that he worked on for decades.

Spanish, French, Italian, and German sources are working together to allow the reconstruction of lost works that the "Citizen Kane" writer started production on in 1957.

'Welles' death in 1985 at age 70 meant he could not finish what was more than 30 years of work.'

Welles started the project in the 1950s in Mexico and continued to compile scenes and make changes in 1961 and 1969, Wellesnet reported. This footage was the start of Welles' work on a film adaptation of "Don Quixote," the 17th-century book that is widely credit with more than 500 million sales.

The deaths of multiple actors did not prevent Welles from continuing the project in 1972, then shifting to color footage, as he put together what is believed to be an experimental film format.

Although the movie is believed to have been nearly finished by 1982, Welles' death in 1985 at age 70 meant he could not finish what was more than 30 years of work.

Now, reconstruction of the film is set to commence through the collaboration of film archives across Europe, which will release the footage to be compiled and overseen by author and filmmaker Esteve Riambau.

Riambau published a book about Welles in the year of his death, and the Spaniard has reportedly been petitioning for the last two years to get approvals of the archival footage.

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Mass amounts of film reel will be compiled from sources including Oja Kodar, Welles' unwed partner at the time of his death. The Croatian actress won custody of the "Don Quixote" negatives in 2017, which consists of 50,000 meters of film.

From France, the Cinémathèque Française will contribute a reported 80 minutes' worth of 35mm film that was actually screened at the Cannes Film Festival in the mid-1980s, according to citations in a Welles biography.

The Filmoteca Española in Spain has another reported 50,000 or so meters of 16mm film that it acquired in 1991, holding all the rights to the materials under the category of cultural and research purposes.

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The Filmmuseum München in Munich will contribute its own prints, negatives, tapes, videos, and other documents from Welles' films, including items that are said to only be "referring" to the "Don Quixote" project.

The intention — for unknown reasons — is that there will be three versions of the film, which will be screened at festivals and archives on a nonprofit basis.

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