Patton Oswalt has joined In Search of Nosferatu as executive producer, putting his name behind a documentary that began principal photography earlier this month and is now being showcased in Cannes. The film, directed by Alexandre O. Philippe, follows a global search for surviving prints of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 vampire classic.

The project is playing at the Fantastic Pavilion, the Marché du Film’s hub for genre cinema, where Philippe and members of the production team are meeting with potential international co-production and distribution partners. That makes Cannes more than a launchpad. It is where the film’s next stage may be set in motion.

Oswalt said the pull of the project was rooted in the film itself. “Nosferatu isn’t just a film; it’s a cultural entity that has seeped into the collective unconscious, and its surviving prints are like relics,” he said, adding that the chance to work with Philippe was irresistible. Philippe, in turn, called Oswalt “a true cinephile and a vital voice among cinephiles,” saying his enthusiasm for the macabre and his grasp of genre mythology make him the right partner for what he described as a journey into the heart of cinema’s most enduring vampire story.

In Search of Nosferatu is built around a search that stretches from Edinburgh to Mexico City and from Seoul to Bratislava, with Philippe and British archivist Lauren Newport-Quinn examining surviving copies of the movie along the way. The project rejects the idea that there is one perfect Nosferatu. Instead, it treats the film’s decay, damage and spread across countries as part of its emotional and historical DNA.

That approach is also the film’s central argument. Rather than restoring Nosferatu to a single fixed state, the documentary will culminate in a reinvention recut from the diverse prints discovered during production, with a brand-new score shaped by Newport-Quinn’s unique sensory experience. All of the prints will be scanned and made available to the public through a free online portal, turning an archival hunt into something open and accessible.

The production is being led by Terri Piñon of Medianoche Productions, with horror historian and author Dr. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas as co-producer and Sonia Drouhliole of Thunderbug Productions as executive producer. It is structured as a multinational co-production with Hopscotch Films in the UK and Scotland, Morbido Group in Mexico, Artactive Production in Slovakia and Autopilot in France. The release also says the documentary will include interviews with a wide range of filmmakers and artists influenced by Nosferatu, a title ranked by the British Film Institute among the greatest films of all time.

That reputation is part of why the project lands with force now. In a 1994 poll of film historians, Nosferatu was ranked the best European film of all time, tied with The Rules of the Game. A century after Murnau’s film first appeared, Philippe is not trying to seal it behind glass. He is trying to open it up, print by print, and the team in Cannes is now looking for partners to help finish that job.