Metropolis is a monumental work. On its release in 1925, after sixteen months'filming, it was Germany's most expensive feature film, a canvas for directorFritz Lang's increasingly extravagant ambitions. Lang, inspired by the skyline ofNew York, created a whole new vision of cities. One of the greatest works ofscience fiction, the film also tells human stories about love and family.Thomas Elsaesser explores the cultural phenomenon of Metropolis: its differentversions (there is no definitive one), its changing meanings, and its role as adatabase of twentieth-century imagery and ideologies.In his foreword to this special edition, published to celebrate the 20thanniversary of the BFI Film Classics series, Elsaesser discusses the impact ofthe 27 minutes of 'lost' footage discovered in Buenos Aires in 2008, andincorporated in a restored edition, which premiered in 2010.