Steven Spielberg’s D-Day epic Saving Private Ryan will be shown in around 300 French cinemas on June 6, the massive World War II operation’s 80th anniversary, studio Paramount has said.
The film, whose limited re-release was announced on Monday, follows Tom Hanks as Captain John Miller, who leads a handful of troops through the havoc of the Allied amphibious invasion of northern France.
Their mission is to rescue Private James Ryan (Matt Damon), all of whose brothers have fallen in battle.
In a famous closing scene, an elderly Ryan visits Miller’s grave in the American cemetery in Normandy, where President Joe Biden will next week commemorate soldiers who fell on D-Day.
Crowned with five Oscars, Spielberg’s D-Day film offers a raw vision of the intense and deadly fighting in summer 1944.
Its opening sequence showing troops storming ashore from landing craft into the teeth of German fire was filmed in Ireland with more than 1,000 extras.
The 1998 original cinema run for Saving Private Ryan raked in $482 million worldwide at the box office.