Release of Raiders of the Lost Ark

Date: June 12, 1981 • Location: Berlin, Germany

Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first film in the Indiana Jones franchise, was released.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is a 1981 American action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Lawrence Kasdan, based on a story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman. Set in 1936, the film stars Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, a globetrotting archaeologist vying with Nazi German forces to recover the long-lost Ark of the Covenant which is said to make an army invincible. Teaming up with his tough former romantic interest Marion Ravenwood, Jones races to stop a rival archaeologist, René Belloq, from guiding the Nazis to the Ark and its power.