Chances of a full length recreation of Fritz Lang's classic movie Metropolis are much higher now, with the discovery of a copy of the movie that survived the re-editing process that followed the film's initial lukewarm reception in 1927.

Roughly a quarter of the film's footage, 948 metres, was excised and believed lost. However, a copy of the long version was taken to Argentina in 1928, eventually arriving at the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires in 1992. New museum director Paula Felix-Didier examined the print this year and discovered it included 700 metres of previously lost footage.

"The discovery of the material thought to be lost forever leads to a new understanding of Fritz Lang's masterpiece," Helmut Possmann, chairman of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Foundation told German paper Die Zeit, confirming that as rights holders, they felt "a responsibility to make the material available to the public."

Click here to read our Metropolis Time Tunnel feature.