The Avenger (Hamnaren 1916), a long-believed lost silent classic from the Swedish director Mauritz Stiller has been rediscovered and restored by the Swedish Film Institute and will screen as part of this summer's Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna.

The film was recently rediscovered in Germany in an edited German version, and through painstaking detective work the Swedish Film Institute has been able to restore the nitrate film to its original Swedish version.

The Avenger tells the story of the young student George Vide and his relationship with Ester, a girl of Jewish origin. When she becomes pregnant, George refuses to marry her on the grounds that he is Christian and she is not.

Mauritz Stiller (1883-1928) stands along with Victor Sjostrom as the greatest director of the first golden age of Swedish film in the 1920s.

He made his debut in 1912 and among his most acclaimed films are his adaptations of Selma Lagerlof's The Atonement Of Gosta Berling (Gosta Berlings Saga, 1924) and The Treasure Of Arne (Herr Arnes Pengar, 1919). The latter was restored by the Swedish Film Institute in 2001.