Janus Films is releasing a new 2K restoration of Welcome II the Terrordome in US cinemas this week, marking a dramatic reappraisal of British director Ngozi Onwurah's groundbreaking 1995 debut feature. The film, savaged by critics on its original release for its raw exploration of racism and state violence, has in recent years been reassessed as a seminal work of Afrofuturist cinema, with institutions programming it in retrospectives.

Onwurah shot the low-budget film, largely funded through fundraising, and until Amma Asante's 2004 debut it remained the only feature by a Black British woman distributed theatrically in the UK. The story opens with a version of the Igbo Landing legend before jumping forward to a dystopian, segregated future Britain where an uprising erupts after a young man's murder. Empire magazine has since retracted its original negative review, and critic Ellen Jones has called the shift a "total critical makeover". The restoration was made from an old theatrical print after the original negative, last known to be held by Technicolor, was lost when that company collapsed.