In honor of its 48th anniversary, a 4K restoration of Charles Burnett’s 1977 drama Killer of Sheep opens April 18 at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. The screening makes the film’s first theatrical release with the song “Unforgettable” by Dinah Washington in the ending, which was replaced in 2007 due to copyright issues.

Burnett wrote, directed, produced, edited, and photographed Killer of Sheep as his UCLA thesis during the ’70s. Filmed in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, the film follows butcher Stan (Henry Gale Sanders) as he struggles to scrape by and feels distanced from his wife and children. Evoking an Italian neo-realist feel, Killer of Sheep has become a landmark film in African American cinema.

Killer of Sheep was restored and remastered in 4K by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, Milestone Films, and the Criterion Collection. The Ahmanson Foundation did a previous restoration in association with the Sundance Institute, where the film was preserved from its original 16mm black-and-white negatives, 35mm three-track master sound mix, and 16mm master mix; the Film Company enlarged the film to 35mm.

Burnett made the film with a largely non-professional cast, focusing on everyday African Americans and their trials and triumphs. Killer of Sheep received the Critics’ Award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1981, was one of the first 50 films on the National Film Registry in 1990, and was selected by the National Society of Film Critics as one of the all-time “100 Essential Films” in 2002. The film never saw widespread distribution until 2007, when Milestone Films premiered a 35mm print at the Berlinale and began worldwide distribution.