A woman relieves the heavy burden from her past when she finally exacts revenge on the man who murdered her entire family.

Presented as part of The 30th Annual Filipino International Cine Festival

Ainara is seventeen, brilliant, and expected to choose a university degree. Instead, she makes a choice no one saw coming: she feels called to God and is considering life as a cloistered nun. Her announcement stuns her family, opens a deep rift between them, and forces each of them to question what they believe and what they want for her.

Winner of the Golden Shell at San Sebastián and the Goya for Best Film.

Come dressed as your favorite character from the film on Halloween and score FREE POPCORN. Snakeskin jackets, red lipstick, and Lynchian weirdness encouraged!

“This is a snakeskin jacket. And for me it’s a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom.”

Adapted from Barry Gifford’s novel, David Lynch’s Palme d’Or-winning Wild at Heart sends Sailor and Lula—Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern—tearing across the American South in a delirious lovers-on-the-run romance fueled by Elvis, The Wizard of Oz, sex, violence, and pure outlaw conviction.

Their escape from Lula’s violently possessive mother (Diane Ladd) leads through a landscape of hit men, roadside grotesques, heavy metal, seedy motels, and sudden bursts of nightmare. Along the way they cross paths with Harry Dean Stanton, Isabella Rossellini, and Willem Dafoe as the unforgettable Bobby Peru.

At once tender, lurid, funny, and unhinged, Wild at Heart is one of the clearest cinematic expressions of Gifford’s world: doomed lovers, dangerous drifters, criminal underworlds, and a distinctly American dream curdling at the edges.

Part of Barry Gifford: Wild Lives, Lost Highways.

More showtimes to be added

NAZA is also playing at NEW PEOPLE

In secret conversations on the rooftops of Tel Aviv at night, the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza are revealed by the people who designed and operated them.

Directors Note:

We made this film out of a sense of obligation to use our position as Israeli filmmakers and journalists to examine the systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians for which our country is responsible. While filming members of Israel’s military on rooftops at night in Tel Aviv over the past three years, we found ourselves asking the very questions that were asked by our grandparents’ generation and throughout the 20th century: how does one group of people allow the total dehumanisation of another?

What do the inner workings of such a system look like? Many of the revelations in the film were published almost immediately as we learned of them, in the months following the October 7th attacks, by The Guardian (one of NAZA’s producers), in collaboration with reporting partners +972 Magazine and Local Call. The film lets us explore something deeper than we could in our investigative journalism alone: not only the words being said but also those that are not said, the silence. It is up to all of us to break that silence.

- Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor

“An essential, devastating documentary…there’s no turning away from what’s said, you simply can’t unknow what you have heard” - Nicolas Rapold, Sight and Sound  

“NAZA might be the best present-tense documentary of its time since Citizenfour” – Marshall Shaffer, The Playlist

From two-time Palme d’Or winner Cristian Mungiu, a Norwegian woman and her devout
Romanian husband relocate with their five children to a remote, close-knit, coastal town. Their
teenage children form a fast bond with a neighboring family as unease begins to simmer around
their rigid beliefs. When allegations of abuse emerge, they are forced to confront a system of
judgment that blurs the line between concern and prejudice.

"It is a treat to be in the hands of a director with such skill for image-making." - Sophie Kaufman, BFI

"Fjord explores clashing worldviews, conformity, tolerance and the boundaries of freedom and intimacy." - Eye Eye Pictures

In 17th-century France, Father Urbain Grandier's protection of the city of Loudun from the corrupt Cardinal Richelieu is undermined by a sexually repressed nun's accusation of witchcraft.

Assembled from the original camera negative, this new 4K restoration presents Ken Russell’s definitive vision of THE DEVILS by referencing the edit he privately constructed in 2004. KEN RUSSELL’S THE DEVILS is the uncut and unfiltered theatrical experience that Russell always envisioned – and the first time the film will be presented restored and in 4K.

An enduring, singular masterpiece of cinema starring Academy Award®-winner Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed, KEN RUSSELL’S THE DEVILS is a prescient epic of obsession and corruption – and a defining work of art from seminal filmmaker Ken Russell.

After his teenage son, Chris, is last seen by a surveillance camera on a bridge over Warsaw's turbulent Vistula River, Daniel embarks on an all-consuming search. Armed with self-built boats, drones, and underwater cameras, he relentlessly scours the river's depths. As months pass, while his own family struggles to live with the uncertainty of Chris's disappearance, Daniel begins helping other families with missing loved ones find answers — and, at times, the closure that continues to elude him.

"An ultra-immersive portrait of grief, acceptance, and the role that hope can play in delaying them." -IndieWire

“One of the best documentaries of Sundance 2026.” - RogerEbert.com

This screening will take place at NEW PEOPLE CINEMA, located at 1746 Post Street in Japantown.

One of the most thrilling movie epics of all time, Seven Samurai tells the story of a sixteenth-century village whose desperate inhabitants hire the eponymous warriors to protect them from invading bandits. This three-hour ride from Akira Kurosawa—featuring legendary actors Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura—seamlessly weaves philosophy and entertainment, delicate human emotions and relentless action, into a rich, evocative, and unforgettable tale of courage and hope.

Please note: Seven Samurai will be shown in two parts with a 10-minute intermission.

FATHERLAND centres on the relationship between the Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller) - actress, writer and rally driver. In the summer of 1949, at the height of the Cold War, father and daughter embark on a challenging and emotional road trip in a black Buick taking them across a Germany in ruins - from US dominated Frankfurt to Soviet controlled Weimar. Returning home after sixteen years of exile in the US, Thomas Mann has to face not only a divided fatherland, but also a deep fracture within his own family.

With FATHERLAND, director Paweł Pawlikowski picks up where he left off with his award-winning IDA and COLD WAR, exploring – in his elliptic, distilled style - the themes of identity, family, love and guilt amid the turmoil and confusion of post-war Europe.

“Another expansive, enriching work from a modern master” – Time Out

“A rich and moving journey through post-World War II Germany” – TheWrap

More showtimes will be added soon.

From Cannes-winning directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi—popularly known as Los Javis—La Bola Negra follows three generations of men across pivotal moments in Spanish history, bound by pain, desire, and love. Carlos (Milo Quifes) longs to belong in a fractured Spain. Sebastián (Guitarricadelafuente) finds connection across enemy lines. And Alberto (Carlos González) uncovers a long-buried family secret—one that finally gives voice to truths the past tried to erase.

Spain's official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards (2027)

Presented together, Hunting Flies and Roly Poly are two distinct satirical comedy films by celebrated Director Andrzej Wajda.

Hunting Flies will be preceded by the short film Roly Poly.

Roly Poly - Runtime: 35 minutes

The story of a racing car driver who undergoes so many transplants that it can no longer be determined which people have contributed to his make-up.

Rally driver Richard Fox keeps getting involved in terrible accidents but always manages to survive thanks to organs transplanted from people who died in crashes he caused. The situation complicates when he starts acquiring his donors’ personality traits along with their organs.

Hunting Flies - Runtime: 104 minutes

Wlodek is a shy man who's afraid of his mother as well as his wife. However, upon meeting Irena, his life takes a new turn.

One of the key films of the Polish film renaissance, this satiric comedy explores the seeming world of emancipated women and emasculated men in Communist Poland. A librarian shares his life and home with his domineering wife. He has an affair with a beautiful intellectual, who wears fly-shaped glasses. She tries to become the woman behind the great artist. It’s a film dedicated to the women of Poland, even as it critiques the relations between the sexes.

Screenings of Andrzej Wajda’s films in the USA in 2026 are part of the ‘Wajda 100 Tour – North America’ project, organized by DI Factory with the financial support of the Polish Film Institute.

While so many effects-driven visions of the future have faded with time, Blade Runner remains a template for imagining the neon-soaked city to come, as influential in its way as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Adapting Philip K. Dick’s novel into the gold standard of sci-fi noir, Ridley Scott shares much of the film’s visual legacy with “visual futurist” Syd Mead, whose design concepts helped define its unforgettable world, and with Vangelis’s atmospheric synth score.

Part of The Future According to Syd Mead, presented in conjunction with Syd Mead: Future Pastime, on view October 8 through December 17, 2026 at San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid Annex Gallery.

Following the finale of his TV show, filmmaker John Wilson searches for a new creative outlet. After attending a workshop on how to write and sell a Hallmark movie, he attempts to apply the same formula to a documentary about concrete.

"I doubt any movie, especially not any documentary, will make me laugh harder this year." --The Hollywood Reporter

Part of our series Wild, Weird, Wicked: Films From Before the Code!

Directed by the illustrious William Wyler (The Good Fairy, The Big Country, Ben-Hur), the briskly paced Counsellor at Law is often cited as the best film to ever tackle the intricacies and pitfalls of the legal profession. George Simon (Hollywood legend John Barrymore, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) is a successful attorney, climbing from a Jewish ghetto to elegant Art Deco offices in the Empire State Building. After allowing one of his former clients to commit perjury to win a case, George realizes he could be disbarred. Flavored with social commentary and wry humor, and featuring a luminous performance by the great Bebe Daniels as George's secretary Regina, Counsellor at Law is an exceptional example of the hard-boiled dramas that defined the Pre-Code cinema of the early 1930s.

Zann's Staff Pick!

The screening will be briefly introduced at 8:20pm, followed by a short drag show organized by Zann Nolan, spotlighting the Haus of Roadkill with performers Vivica Bea Roadkill, Milkweed & Xena Faux Beah.

You don’t want to miss it!

When vaudeville star Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is arrested for the murder of her two-timing husband, she enlists a smooth-talking attorney (Richard Gere) to grease the wheels of her public image and avoid a death sentence. Meanwhile, up and comer Roxie Hart (Renée Zellweger) has arrived on Murderess’ Row and will use every trick in the book to keep the spotlight on her own predicament. This jazz-age tale of jealousy, deceit, and fame earned six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and remains a musical favorite decades after its release.

Followed by a post-screening Q&A moderated by filmmaker Judy Irving.

In 1972, biologists George Hunt and Molly Warner make an unprecedented discovery while studying seagulls on California’s Channel Islands. To their surprise, a great number of the nesting pairs they observe are both female.

Preceded by an excerpt from Judy Irving's The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.

The 28-year-old Kubrick’s first film with a certifiable star—looming lead lug Sterling Hayden, fronting an ensemble of desperate, lumpy-visaged characters, including the livewire Timothy Carey—is a late, great entry in the noir canon, with Kubrick and hard-boiled author extraordinaire Jim Thompson adapting Lionel White’s pulp novel, filtered through an ingeniously fractured flashback structure. Electric, pulse-pounding filmmaking from infamous perfectionist Kubrick, and a control freak’s nightmare vision of how even the best-laid plans can come undone because of human frailty.

“ARGUABLY KUBRICK’S MOST PERFECTLY CONCEIVED AND EXECUTED FILM!” – Chicago Reader

Director J.M. Harper in person for a post-screening Q&A.

Soul Patrol uncovers a hidden chapter of American military history by focusing on the Vietnam War's first Black special ops team, an elite unit operating deep behind enemy lines. With unprecedented access to this once-secretive group of African-American veterans, director J.M. Harper reconstructs their journey with an immediacy rarely seen in Vietnam War storytelling, using raw Super 8 footage, photographs, and audio recordings from their personal archives.

Opening on the war’s 50th anniversary, the surviving members reunite in a hotel that becomes a surreal liminal space, where memory, brotherhood, and unresolved trauma collide. As the men reflect on their experiences, the film interrogates the contradictions of fighting for freedom abroad while facing inequality at home. Winner of the Directing Award for U.S. Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, Soul Patrol is not just a war story, but a reckoning – an intimate portrait of survival, memory, and the enduring cost of war on those asked to fight it.

Winner – Directing Award, US Documentary Competition, Sundance Film Festival 2026

“Haunting, revelatory… “Soul Patrol” contributes a little-known chapter to the nation’s understanding of Vietnam War and Black history.” – Variety

Veneno’, a rebellious young drifter, frequents roadside diners where he sleeps with truck drivers. Urgently needing a ride, he meets ‘Muñeco’, a hard-edged driver who keeps to himself. He convinces Muñeco to take him deep into the hyper-masculine world of long-haul trucking across the north of Mexico. As they travel together and an unexpected intimacy builds between them, shadows from Veneno’s past resurface, putting both their lives at risk.

"Frank and frankly hot … On the Road is unusually both hormonal and hard-boiled." - Guy Lodge, Variety

Winner of the 2025 Venice Horizons best film and Queer Lion awards.

Mexico’s official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards (2027)

Co-presented by Bay Area Chinese Culture Salon and Amoment Books.

Nineteen-year-old Songlian, a promising student whose family has been destroyed by her father's death, is forced to abandon her studies and marry into wealth, becoming the fourth and newest concubine of the aging, unseen Master Chen. Inside his walled estate, she discovers a household ruled by a merciless ritual: each night, red lanterns are lit outside the chambers of whichever wife the master chooses to visit, granting her privilege and status while the others are cast into cold irrelevance. Songlian is drawn into the orbit of her rivals, each shaped by years of fighting for the same scraps of attention. Determined at first to rise above the games, Songlian is gradually worn down by isolation and humiliation until she strikes back, trading secrets and favors to secure her place in Master Chen’s hierarchy. As petty cruelty turns even more dire, Songlian is forced to confront what these desperate measures will cost her soul.

One of international cinema’s greatest stars of the era, Gong Li is “nuanced and understated” (Chicago Reader) as the stifled young woman forced into a repressive world of concubinage. Newly restored, the film stands as one of the defining works of Fifth Generation Chinese cinema and international film of the 1990s.

“As visually striking as it is dramatically effective...subtly exploring the politics of power and control” - Janet Maslin, The New York Times

The 4K restoration of Raise the Red Lantern was carried out by the Udine Far East Film Festival on the occasion of its 26th edition. The original image and sound negatives were used under the supervision of Director Zhang Yimou. The vintage positive copy, presented at the 1991 Venice International Film Festival and preserved at the Venice Biennale's Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts, was used for color reference. The restoration was made in 2024 at L'Immagine Ritrovata (Hong Kong - Bologna).

A Palestinian American activist's murder in Southern California sparks a 40-year search for justice, exposing the origins of a modern political movement's dangerous ideology.

In October 1985, Santa Ana, California was shaken by a brazen act of political violence when Palestinian American Alex Odeh, a beloved teacher and community leader, was killed by a tripwire bomb planted in his office. Despite substantial evidence and identified suspects, the case was never solved. Who Killed Alex Odeh? reopens the mystery, tracking a renewed investigation in real time as new leads emerge, long-buried records come to light, and the forces behind a political assassination are finally confronted. 

Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Award for Journalistic Excellence

Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them.

At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. With its aching musical soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-bin, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past 25 years of cinema.

"...a film about, yes, love; but also betrayal, loss, missed opportunities, memory, the brutality of time’s passage, loneliness – the list goes on." - Peter Walker, The Guardian

Where its predecessor was a slow-burn suspenser, Cameron’s ALIENS is a bombastic, no-holds-barred exosuit fight to the finish, an express elevator to hell, goin’ down! Lone survivor Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) goes back for a rematch with the creatures who slaughtered the crew of the Nostromo, this time bringing along a squad of hard-boiled space marines whose number includes the great Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein, and Lance Henriksen’s mumblety-peg-playing android Bishop. Rounding out the superb supporting players are the aliens themselves, pinnacles of pre-CGI visual effects that just keep coming, and coming, and coming, and coming… while Mead’s contributions can mostly be seen in the blade-like military vessel Sulaco and the unforgettable “Power Loader” donned by Ripley for the main event grudge match.

Screening in Cameron’s preferred cut, which adds nearly 20 minutes of material not seen in the theatrical version, including glimpses of life at the ill-fated Hadley’s Hope colony and some “kickass” motion-activated turret guns.

“Hot off of the immediate successes of Blade Runner and TRON, Syd Mead was enlisted by Cameron to build out the world of ALIENS, his muscular, action-oriented second chapter to Ridley Scott’s now-iconic 1979 masterpiece. The centerpiece of Mead’s designs is the U.S.S. Sulaco, the military spaceship that transports the Colonial Marines, infusing the vessel with a functional and industrial aesthetic that enhanced the film’s gritty realism.” —Future Pastime exhibition curators William Corman and Elon Solo

20 years after becoming a worldwide sensation, Bong Joon Ho’s acclaimed creature feature THE HOST returns to theaters in a stunning new 4K restoration, featuring an exclusive conversation with the Oscar®-winning filmmaker.

When a terrifying creature rises from the Han River and brings chaos to Seoul, single dad Gang-du (Song Kang-ho, Parasite) will stop at nothing to rescue his daughter from the clutches of the horrifying Host. Equal parts creature-feature thrill ride and poignant human story, Oscar-winning visionary Bong Joon Ho’s first global smash remains an incredible action drama and propulsively entertaining modern classic.

“A thing of beauty, the perfect mixture of the silly and the grave.” – The New Yorker

A Deeper Love: The Story of Miss Peppermint is an award-winning documentary that follows trailblazing performer and activist Peppermint across nearly a decade of her life and career.

Moving between intimate private moments and major public milestones, the documentary reveals the realities behind the spotlight: the struggle to survive as a working artist, the pressure of becoming a symbol, and the friendships and chosen family that sustain her along the way.

At its heart, A Deeper Love is a story about persistence, chosen family, and the power of queer artists to shape culture while fighting to live authentically.

"Powerful, urgent, and deeply human." - Elliot Page, The Hollywood Reporter

"This documentary arrives at a time when Trans voices need to be heard the loudest." - Attitude Magazine

Post screening Q&A with Director's and Film Subject's Janay Boulos and Abd Alkader Habak moderated by Amanda Pike from Center for Investigative Reporting.

By turning the camera on themselves, the co-directors follow the arc of their own love story as the vehicle for a deeply moving narrative about the complexity of revolution and war. This film showcases the power of journalism through emotion and vulnerability; enduring, bearing witness, and telling one’s own story oftentimes has the most impact.

Spanning 13 years of revolution, war and exile, from besieged Aleppo to the confines of a London newsroom, Lebanese journalist Janay Boulos and Syrian activist and cameraman Abd Alkader Habak relive their war reporting and their unexpected love story, using a vast personal trove of archives.

“...Birds of War successfully immortalizes a beautiful, almost unbelievable love story that blooms in the wake of violence.” - Loud & Clear

2026 Sundance Film Festival - World Cinema DocumentarySpecial Jury Award for Journalistic Impact

Seattle International Film Festival 2026 - Documentary Competition Grand Jury Award

Ahead of the December 18 opening of Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s latest film, ALL OF A SUDDEN, revisit one of his most beguiling earlier works, ASAKO I & II.

A mysterious and intoxicating pop romance, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s follow-up to the acclaimed Happy Hour begins with Asako, a young woman who meets and falls madly in love with a drifter, Baku, who one day drifts right out of her life.

Two years later, working in Tokyo, Asako sees Baku again — or, rather, a young, solid businessman named Ryohei who bears a striking resemblance to her old flame. They begin building a happy life together until traces of Asako’s past start to resurface.

“Exquisite. A playful, haunting drama of love lost and regained.” - Justin Chang, LA Times

Part of IN THE MOOD FOR ALMODÓVAR, presented in anticipation of our upcoming run of BITTER CHRISTMAS.

Rejected from Cannes for being sacrilegious in its critical depiction of Catholicism’s role in modern Spanish society and marking a major tone shift in Pedro Almodóvar’s filmmaking in the midst of The Movida Madrileña. This piercing psychedelic tale follows cabaret singer Yolanda as she finds refuge in an eccentric convent at risk of financial collapse where the nuns call themselves The Humiliated Redeemers. There, she finds herself among chain-smoking sisters, a pet tiger that can only be soothed by a young Carmen Maura (WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN, VOLVER) playing bongos, and erotic novel smugglers with mustache hairs that blow in the wind.

These characters enable each other’s vices and neuroses as they maintain the illusion of seeking salvation under the wing of The Mother Superior, their drug and love addicted leader who uses the mission as a means of luring in needy women. From the deteriorating convent emerges a potent yet playful reminder that we are all sinners that need to be loved.

Thirty-four days before she’s sent to prison, notorious Silicon Valley founder Elizabeth Holmes invites a skeptical film crew to document her every move. What begins as an intimate portrait of an enigmatic felon becomes a mind-bending three-year journey into the abyss. From boundary-pushing directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim comes You Can See Everything.

"A triumphant, riveting, and continually shape-shifting piece of creative non-fiction with curiosity and a playful sense of uncomfortable humor..." - RogerEbert.com

More screenings to be added.

Robert Longo’s JOHNNY MNEMONIC: IN BLACK & WHITE strips the cyberpunk thriller down to its starkest elements, turning its corporate dystopia, overloaded data networks, and street-level futurism into something even more graphic and uncanny. Keanu Reeves stars as a data courier carrying information directly in his brain, racing to deliver a dangerous payload before it kills him. Syd Mead contributed concept designs to the film, bringing his industrial, lived-in vision of the future to a world of megacorporations, obsolete technology, and information overload.

Part of The Future According to Syd Mead, presented in conjunction with Syd Mead: Future Pastime, on view October 8 through December 17, 2026 at San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid Annex Gallery.

Part of IN THE MOOD FOR ALMODÓVAR, presented in anticipation of our upcoming run of BITTER CHRISTMAS.

This fast-paced celebration of hysteria put Almodóvar on the map by joyfully parading his depthless obsession with women - especially the wild ones. Driven to the brink by her married lover, Pepa (Carmen Maura) cries at work, lights her bed on fire, and loads the gazpacho with barbiturates. Her girlfriends don't fare much better in this melodramatic farce that runs at a constant parody-level soap-operatic pitch. It's no small coincidence that during filming Carmen Maura grew so angry with the director she outright refused to speak to him.

Men drive the women of this movie to crisis - a trash collector, Shiite terrorists, boyfriends, Antonio Banderas - and the women fight back as a series of peculiar coincidences tightens the social fabric of Madrid. "I thought this only happened in the movies," a cab driver tells Pepa after she has him tail another cab. Yeah yeah, her expression says, but it's headed somewhere very interesting.

Teresa Carpenter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Village Voice article “Death of a Playmate” was adapted by Fosse for what would be his final movie, with the filmmaker propulsively exploring in sorrowful detail how the life of Dorothy Stratten (1980 Playboy Playmate of the Year) was clouded and then ended by manager/husband Paul Snider. Transcending showbiz trappings, Fosse elicited all-too-human portrayals from Mariel Hemingway and Eric Roberts in the leads.

This screening will take place at NEW PEOPLE CINEMA, located at 1746 Post Street in Japantown.

Director Tanaz Eshaghian in person for a post-screening Q&A

An Eye for an Eye unfolds like a real-life courtroom thriller, with stakes as high as life and death. Years after killing her abusive husband in an act of self-defense, Tahereh now faces execution unless she can pay the Diya—blood money demanded by her abuser’s family. With the clock ticking and public sympathy running low, her son Mohsen is thrust into a desperate race against time to save his mother’s life, turning to outside donors in a society where victims of domestic abuse are often met with silence—or scorn.

With unprecedented access to private negotiations, legal proceedings, and intimate family moments, the filmmakers bring us deep inside a harrowing moral and legal labyrinth. We witness not only the emotional toll on Tahereh and her children, but also the chilling mechanics of a justice system shaped by patriarchal values and religious law. Gripping and deeply human, An Eye for an Eye lays bare the personal costs of systemic injustice—and the fierce resilience of a family fighting for their right to move forward.

On the last day of World War II in a small town somewhere in Poland, Polish exiles of war and the occupying Soviet forces confront the beginning of a new day and a new Poland. In this incendiary environment we find Home Army soldier Maciek Chelmicki, who has been ordered to assassinate an incoming commissar. But a mistake stalls his progress and leads him to Krystyna, a beautiful barmaid who gives him a glimpse of what his life could be.

Gorgeously photographed and brilliantly performed, Ashes and Diamonds masterfully interweaves the fate of a nation with that of one man, resulting in one of the most important Polish films of all time.

Screenings of Andrzej Wajda’s films in the USA in 2026 are part of the ‘Wajda 100 Tour – North America’ project, organized by DI Factory with the financial support of the Polish Film Institute.

In attendance for a special post-film Q&A will be original Santas John Law and Rob Schmitt, as well as other surprise guests.

Today, Santacon is known as perhaps the single most hated event on the planet. A dreaded day in which tens of thousands of drunk idiots dress like Santa and invade countless cities around the world to live out their drunkest and most violent instincts.

But it began as something else entirely: A piece of absurdism designed to shock people out of their everyday existence by creating a sense of awe and confusion.

Born from the San Francisco underground, the folks who started Santacon in the '90s are the same people who started Burning Man and who served as the real-life inspiration for Fight Club and Project Mayhem. And today, they want nothing to do with their Christmas creation.

Join us for a special screening of SANTACON, a new documentary from director Seth Porges (Class Action Park). Told with exclusive access to the event’s original creators and with countless hours of never-before-seen home movies from the 1990s, you’ll be transported back in time to a world of awe, wonder, and endless possibility.

All Santas are invited to attend in costume.

Director Rafael Manuel in person for a post screening Q&A.

The Philippines’ official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards

Presented by FiliKula

Amid stifling heat and pervasive drought, Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto), a 17-year-old Ilokana from the rural north, works at a posh country club outside Manila, lining up golf balls for powerful men to drive into the verdant horizon. New to the job, she wanders the immaculate grounds sampling its luxuries as members, including an industrialist and his expatriate niece, the club president and his pampered wife, and a slew of Chinese tourists, engage in a complex dance with the club’s doting and subservient staff. But something is rotting beneath the pristine fairways of the elite resort, as Isabel discovers when she tries to return a mislaid golf club to its patriarchal director, Dr. Palanca (Teroy Guzman). The deeper she journeys into its most exclusive corners, the closer she gets to the violent truths of the club, her native Philippines, and her own past..

“A masterwork…with Filipiñana, Manuel opens new vistas in the future of the cinema.” – The New Yorker

“An invigorating dose of arch formalism in a sea of mainstream sincerity, this is the kind of movie that asks for the viewer’s attention…the angle of a golf club can evoke suspense, a piece of fruit on the ground can feel like a tragedy, and a casual glance can take your breath away.” – Vulture

Celebrating Frameline's 50th anniversary alongside the Roxie's 50 years as an arthouse cinema, as part of our Arthouse 50 series. A fitting occasion to celebrate decades of shared queer film history, with the Roxie serving as one of Frameline's longtime homes.

One of our favorite John Waters movies of all time, the film that has repeatedly aroused olfactory ecstasy in Roxie audiences, with official Odorama cards!

In POLYESTER, John Waters’ muse Divine plays Francine Fishpaw, a suburban housewife whose life is falling apart. Hated by her neighbors, cheated on by her husband and concerned about her kids, Francine befriends the “world’s oldest debutante” Cuddles Kovinsky (Edith Massey), falls for Todd Tomorrow (Tab Hunter), and...well, chaos ensues. A masterpiece of bad taste and furious camp, POLYESTER was Water’s last full-bore gross-out before 1988’s substantially more tame HAIRSPRAY.

For the release of POLYESTER in 1981, John Waters pioneered an advance in cinema technology so putrid, so repulsive, and so downright stinky it overwhelmed the nation in stench. Francine’s acute sense of smell leaps out and grabs your nostrils with the help of the Odorama card, a scratch and sniff card with ten numbered scratchers that releases Francine’s olfactory experiences out of the movie and straight up your nose.

Director David Alvarado in person for Q&A!

Against political resistance and industry skepticism, Luis Valdez pushes Chicano storytelling from the fields to the film screen with Zoot Suit and La Bamba, crafting iconic works that challenge, celebrate, and expand America’s story.

Acclaimed playwright and director Luis Valdez recognized early on the profound impact of seeing one’s own humanity reflected onstage and on screen. He used theater to ignite change while working alongside farmworkers and Cesar Chavez, and he made films that amplified Chicano experiences. His work expanded audiences, bringing in people who had rarely seen their stories told before. Now, director David Alvarado reveals the fuel behind his legendary career.

Alvarado brings us close to Valdez, charting his career milestones and enduring cultural influence. He employs vibrant stylistic choices, using split screens, remarkable archival footage rescued from decay, and a pachuco narrator who tells it like it is by interjecting candid commentary throughout. Alvarado ensures Luis Valdez’s contributions are unmistakable and that his message — “America is Chicano” — resonates proudly, which feels especially vital for today.

Cameron Winter, in December 2025, after a months-long sold-out tour with his band Geese, returned to New York to play a single show at Carnegie Hall. This is the movie.

Directed and shot on 35mm and 16mm by Oscar-winning filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another), the crew includes filmmaker and actor Benny Safdie (The Smashing Machine) and music producer Ariel Rechtshaid (Grammy winner for albums with Vampire Weekend and Adele).

GQ praised Cameron Winter’s show at Carnegie Hall as “staggeringly good,” and Nick Cave said he has a "a glorious, emotive voice with brilliant, blistering words, a racked and wondrous thing.” Winter’s solo album Heavy Metal was named one of the best of the year by Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Paste and Mojo and Geese’s last record Getting Killed was named the best album of 2025 by The New Yorker, NME, and Stereogum.

Tickets for Saturday, December 5 at 4 PM available here

Tickets for Sunday, December 6 at 1 PM available here

More showtimes will be added.

Editor Joe Bini in person for a post-screening Q&A.

Filmmaker Ross McElwee has spent forty years recording himself and his family, creating documentaries that chronicle the shifting contours of American society through the lens of personal history. His son Adrian grew up inside those films, and eventually began experimenting with the camera himself. When a Hollywood producer acquires the rights to adapt McElwee's 1986 breakthrough SHERMAN’S MARCH into a work of fiction, twenty-year-old Adrian sees a chance for his father to finally reach a wider audience. As the adaptation stalls, Adrian gets swept into a deepening drug addiction and dies from a fentanyl overdose, leaving behind hours of personal video footage.

Retracing Adrian’s final years, McElwee reckons with what his camera captured and what remained hauntingly out of frame. As he reflection a lifetime behind the camera, Ross’s own effort to remix and remake the movie that Adrian never got to finish takes on new significance. An ever-expanding hall of mirrors built from decades of home movies, REMAKE is both McElwee's attempt to hold onto his son, and to let him go...

Written, Filmed, Edited, Produced, And Directed By Ross Mcelwee.

“Extraordinarily clear-eyed for a work so broken-hearted: at once a home movie, an intimate diary, and an expansive study of the filmmaker’s purpose, constantly disrupting its own conclusions with expressions of anger, amusement, and still-unresolved confusion” – Variety  

“Emotionally piercing... meaningful and poignant” – The Playlist

This screening will take place at NEW PEOPLE CINEMA, located at 1746 Post Street in Japantown.

Followed by a post-screening filmmaker Q&A with Cookie Queens Director Alysa Nahmias and Bucksin Director Mars Verrone.

A celebration of girlhood and the complexities that come with it, Cookie Queens is a coming-of-age story about the joys, pressures, and tensions woven into one of America’s most cherished rituals: Girl Scout Cookie season.

"Nahmias maintains her delicate observational style throughout, painting both a melancholic portrait of childhood and several different corners of Americana through young perspectives..." - Tomris Laffly, RogerEbert

Preceded by the short film Buckskin

An experimental portrait of the filmmaker’s grandfather: Carroll B. Williams Jr., a ground-breaking African-American and indigenous forester, reflecting on his work and legacy in the twilight of his life. Directed by Mars Verrone (17 minutes, 20 seconds)

Ngozi Onwurah’s radically ahead-of-its-time Afrofuturist vision WELCOME II THE TERRORDOME made history as the first theatrically distributed British feature directed by a Black woman. Nevertheless, it was largely dismissed upon its release by critics unable to see the urgency in its evocation of a gritty dystopia in which Black people have been relegated to living in a slum called the Terrordome, where simmering racial tension threatens to boil over in the wake of a young boy’s death.

Over thirty years later, Onwurah’s fusion of political commentary and genre spectacle looks positively prescient, and her ability to build an entire cosmology that connects the history of slavery to present-day police brutality is nothing less than visionary.

Part of The Future According to Syd Mead, presented in conjunction with Syd Mead: Future Pastime, on view October 8 through December 17, 2026 at San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid Annex Gallery.

Part of IN THE MOOD FOR ALMODÓVAR, presented in anticipation of our upcoming run of BITTER CHRISTMAS.

A travel writer’s burgeoning relationship with a famed female matador is violently interrupted when she falls into a coma after a bullring tragedy, and while waiting at her hospital bedside, he meets a male nurse keeping a similar vigil over a comatose ballet dancer. Only Almodóvar could come up with such a deliciously ridiculous premise for a film, and only Almodóvar could make it into a melodrama of unusual emotional power.

“The most mature work this director has ever brought to the screen… [has] the freakish, elegant calm of early Tennessee Williams.” - The New York Times

“Truly groundbreaking” - Werner Herzog

"A David Attenborough doc shot by someone on shrooms." - i-D Magazine

For thousands of years, polar bears have migrated along the shores of Hudson Bay in northern Canada. Today, that ancient rhythm collides with a human world of tourism, surveillance, and control. Nuisance Bear immerses viewers in the experience of a polar bear forced to navigate tourists, wildlife officers, and hunters as climate change delays the freeze and pushes bears closer to human settlements. When a sacred predator is branded a “nuisance,” it becomes unclear who truly belongs in this shared landscape.

Returning to Churchill, Manitoba—the self-styled “Polar Bear Capital of the World”—filmmakers Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman expand their award-winning short into a feature guided by an Inuit narrator whose perspective resists simplification. Shot with striking intimacy and scale, the film observes bears that are constantly monitored, photographed, and redirected. In tracing this uneasy coexistence, Nuisance Bear becomes a meditation on how humans manage, commodify, and redefine wildlife—overturning the conventions of the nature documentary and reframing animals not as spectacle, but as active agents in a rapidly changing world.

Grand Jury Prize for Documentary (U.S.) - 2026 Sundance Film Festival

Best Cinematography - 2026 Woodstock Film Festival

Check out IN THE MOOD FOR ALMODÓVAR, our limited series celebrating three earlier works by Pedro Almodóvar.

The incomparable Almodóvar has been rendering the life of the creative mind on screen for five decades, with exquisite attention to every nuance of both aesthetic design and human emotion. With his complexly conceived latest, he uses a metacinematic framework to explore the artist’s tenuous relationship between fiction and reality. The sublimely expressive Bárbara Lennie stars as Elsa, a well-known actress suffering from debilitating migraines whose directorial efforts had failed upon release but have become cult classics. While trying to maintain a relationship with her loyal boyfriend Bonifacio (Patrick Criado), a fireman moonlighting as a stripper, she becomes inspired by the travails of her friends to write a new script.

Yet Elsa’s story is itself a story—being written by Raúl (Leonardo Sbaraglia), an Almodóvar-esque filmmaker who is, in turn, taking his cues from the lives of those around him. Mixing the irreverence of early Almodóvar with the somber melodrama of his later work, Bitter Christmas insightfully details the vampiric nature of artistic creation and how we use fiction to try and right the wrongs of our lives.

"With its moving musical interludes, comic patter and outrageously chic production design, Bitter Christmas is another dazzling, late-period jewel" -- Little White Lies

More showtimes coming soon

Steven Lisberger’s TRON plunges Jeff Bridges into a glowing digital universe of programs, gladiatorial games, and machine logic, creating one of the most distinctive visions of cyberspace ever put on screen. Syd Mead’s concept work helped shape the film’s sleek vehicles and futuristic environments, bringing his precision and industrial imagination to a world that felt radically new in 1982. Decades later, TRON still looks like the future as dreamed by a graphic designer with the circuitry exposed.

Part of The Future According to Syd Mead, presented in conjunction with Syd Mead: Future Pastime, on view October 8 through December 17, 2026 at San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid Annex Gallery.

This screening is a fundraiser for the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE). For over thirty years, NACOLE has worked to make civilian oversight a cornerstone of every community, ensuring law enforcement and correctional institutions operate with transparency, accountability, fairness and integrity.

Following the film, experienced civilian oversight investigators will participate in a Q&A and will discuss their work and the film’s realistic portrayal of a police misconduct investigation. They’ll explore the practical and psychological challenges of conducting these investigations and the advantages of having independent civilian investigators, rather than police, investigate allegations of officer misconduct.

Following the Yellow Vest protests of Paris in 2018, internal affairs officer Stéphanie Bertrand must investigate the conduct of her fellow police officers during the demonstrations. Though striving to remain objective, Stéphanie’s position leaves her at stark odds with the rest of the police force. When she scrutinizes the near-fatal assault of a teenage protester from her hometown, Stéphanie is met with growing institutional pressure to drop the case and move on. The further her investigation develops, the more Stéphanie’s faith in the system she belongs to is tested.

From Dominik Moll, the award-winning French director of The Night of the 12th, comes his latest procedural — “a piercing slow-burn examination of police brutality” (The Hollywood Reporter) led by the “marvelous” (Screen Daily) Léa Drucker in a César-winning role for Best Actress. Timely and socially resonant, Case 137 is a tautly constructed study of institutional violence which asks charged questions about corruption and accountability in the criminal justice system.

The Griswolds have planned all year for a great summer vacation. From their suburban Chicago home, across America, to the wonders of Wally World fun park in California, every step of the way has been carefully plotted. Except a few hundred hysterical exceptions. There’s never been a family vacation like it. Except maybe yours. And that helps explain why National Lampoon’s Vacation remains so popular…and so very funny.

About Floating Features

San Francisco Legacy Businesses Red and White Fleet and The Roxie are partnering to turn the hybrid electric vessel Enhydra into a sailing cinema for a limited run of nighttime film cruises on the Bay. Join us this autumn for a 2-hour twilight cruise and a feature film handpicked by the Roxie. Our electric vessel means no engine noise and a totally unique al fresco movie experience.

Full schedule available here.

In 1976, a young woman in Krakow is making her diploma film, looking behind the scenes at the life of a 1950s bricklayer, Birkut, who was briefly a proletariat hero, at how that heroism was created, and what became of him.

Often called the Polish Citizen Kane, Man of Marble reflects director Wajda's emerging hostility to the Stalinist cultural establishment and its oppressive restrictions on artistic expression.

Screenings of Andrzej Wajda’s films in the USA in 2026 are part of the ‘Wajda 100 Tour – North America’ project, organized by DI Factory with the financial support of the Polish Film Institute.

Co-Presented by the Center for Sex and Culture

Post screening conversation with the filmmaker Paul X. Sanchez IV and Center for Sex & Culture director Carol Queen.

Alien Sex Party is an undersung, must-see cultural document of the sex-positive ‘90s [says sexologist & Center for Sex & Culture director Carol Queen], showing us how it rolls when that social philosophy spools out into total hijinks (with theme songs!). Which is why it’s a cult classic among those who walked the walk back then. In our perfect world it’s alwaysXXXmas Eve in the porn store.

In turn-of-the-century Łódź, three ambitious young men set out to build a textile empire, chasing wealth through a city transformed by industry, greed, and ruthless competition. Wajda turns Władysław Reymont’s Nobel Prize-winning novel into a feverish, visually striking portrait of capitalism in overdrive, where success comes at a brutal human cost.

Screenings of Andrzej Wajda’s films in the USA in 2026 are part of the ‘Wajda 100 Tour – North America’ project, organized by DI Factory with the financial support of the Polish Film Institute.

Based on the humorous writings of author Jean Shepherd, this beloved holiday movie follows the wintry exploits of youngster Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley), who spends most of his time dodging a bully (Zack Ward) and dreaming of his ideal Christmas gift, a "Red Ryder air rifle." Frequently at odds with his cranky dad (Darren McGavin) but comforted by his doting mother (Melinda Dillon), Ralphie struggles to make it to Christmas Day with his glasses and his hopes intact.

About Floating Features

San Francisco Legacy Businesses Red and White Fleet and The Roxie are partnering to turn the hybrid electric vessel Enhydra into a sailing cinema for a limited run of nighttime film cruises on the Bay. Join us this autumn for a 2-hour twilight cruise and a feature film handpicked by the Roxie. Our electric vessel means no engine noise and a totally unique al fresco movie experience.

Full schedule available here.

Presented by OUTlook and Frameline

Dubbed “SF’s hottest new holiday tradition” by the San Francisco Chronicle, Frameline’s fourth annual Carol Day returns to its home at the Roxie Theater. Shake up your martinis, don your gloves (and gay apparel) for a costume contest, and get ready to be flung out of space — again. 

Set during Christmastime in 1950s New York, Todd Haynes’ adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt centers on shy, aspiring photographer Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara), whose world changes when she meets the elegant Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett). As Carol struggles to maintain custody of her daughter amid a heated divorce, she and Therese develop a secret-yet-passionate romance that changes them both irrevocably. 

Featuring a stunning screenplay from Phyllis Nagy; memorable supporting turns from Sarah Paulson, Kyle Chandler, and Jake Lacy; and wholly transportive production design and costuming, Carol remains one of queer cinema’s most exquisite films.

Audiences will fall in love with the charming Raj (Shah Rukh Khan) and the spirited Simran (Kajol), both Indians raised in the UK, who meet on a train when traveling with their friends across Europe. A frothy love story develops against picture-postcard Alpine landscapes, and the couple’s romance is threatened when Simran’s father takes her to India for an arranged marriage. The film wears its patriotism on its sleeve as it captures the conflict between modern attitudes toward love and traditional Indian values, where duty to the family takes precedence. 

Three decades since its release, the magic of DILWALE DULHANIA LE JAYENGE (DDLJ) remains undiminished; the film still screens daily at the Maratha Mandir Theatre in Mumbai.

Part of Cinema Masala

Cinema Masala is an initiative of the Coolidge Corner Theatre, in partnership with the Film Heritage Foundation. Founded and made possible by Sapna Saxena.

A tale of matrimony, loss, and undying love, centering on orphaned brothers Rajesh (Monish Bahl) and Prem (Salman Kahn), who become enamored with family friend Pooja (Renuka Shahane) and her spunky sister Nisha (Madhuri Dixit). What starts with an arranged marriage between families, and changes to a charming double romance, takes a turn for the tragic when Pooja dies unexpectedly, leaving behind an infant and questions about Nisha’s duty to her family.

This blockbuster of blockbusters took the Indian movie-going public by storm, breaking box-office records and bursting at the seams with drama, romance, and 14 different musical numbers. Today, it’s credited with pushing Bollywood toward more romantic stories after the action-heavy 80s, and its iconic songs are still wedding staples.

Part of Cinema Masala

Cinema Masala is an initiative of the Coolidge Corner Theatre, in partnership with the Film Heritage Foundation. Founded and made possible by Sapna Saxena.

MANTHAN is a fictionalized account of the extraordinary dairy cooperative movement that transformed India from a milk-deficient nation to the world’s largest milk producer. It is also India’s first crowdfunded film, produced by 500,000 dairy farmers who contributed two rupees each toward the production.

When Dr. Rao (Girish Karnad), an idealistic veterinary surgeon from the city, arrives in a small village to start a milk cooperative movement, his notions of equitable distribution of profits—irrespective of class and caste and free of exploitative middlemen—churn up a maelstrom of mistrust, anger, and resistance that threatens the deep-rooted social hierarchy based on generations of discrimination.

Part of Cinema Masala

Cinema Masala is an initiative of the Coolidge Corner Theatre, in partnership with the Film Heritage Foundation. Founded and made possible by Sapna Saxena.

When director Kamal Amrohi set out to make a film dedicated to his wife, the actress Meena Kumari, he had no way of knowing that the project would take him across two decades, multiple pauses in production, and the breakup of the marriage that inspired him in the first place.

It’s a real-life drama that almost rivals the tale of Salim (Ashok Kumar), a chivalrous forest ranger, and Sahibjaan (Kumari), the tawaif brothel worker whose beauty captivates him. Shot in rich Eastmancolor on gloriously sumptuous sets, PAKEEZAH wraps its tortured romance in an eye-popping fabric of warmth and visual texture.

Part of Cinema Masala

Cinema Masala is an initiative of the Coolidge Corner Theatre, in partnership with the Film Heritage Foundation. Founded and made possible by Sapna Saxena.

Conceived as the biggest action-adventure film ever made in India, Ramesh Sippy’s deeply influential 1975 “Curry Western” remains a towering landmark in film history. Seeking revenge against a nihilistic dacoit bandit leader (Amjad Khan), a retired cop enlists the help of two slick, charismatic crooks whom he put behind bars (unforgettably portrayed by Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra).

Naturally, the criminal duo soon fall in love with two local village girls, but danger remains on the horizon. A delirious four-course meal of action, musical numbers, ultramagnetic performances from Indian cinema’s most iconic actors, and jaw-dropping wide-screen cinematography, SHOLAY is here presented in its recently completed director’s cut, the most faithful approximation of Sippy’s original ending before it was censored by the Indian Censor Board.

Part of Cinema Masala

Cinema Masala is an initiative of the Coolidge Corner Theatre, in partnership with the Film Heritage Foundation. Founded and made possible by Sapna Saxena.