Conor Marsh lives a secluded life with his dog, Sandy, until one day he begins playing Obex, a new, state-of-the-art computer game. When Sandy goes missing, the line between reality and game blurs and Conor must venture into the strange world of OBEX to bring her home.

Baltimore-based writer-director Albert Birney (Strawberry Mansion, 2021 Sundance Film Festival) returns with another delightfully skewed and surreal lo-fi fantasy. Set in pre-internet 1987 and strikingly shot in monochromatic black and white, the film depicts Conor’s (Birney) lonely existence of solitary screen time, transfixed by early Macs with slowly rendering graphics and TVs aglow with the horror movie late show.

Matching these hypnotic images, Birney immerses us in a dense soundscape of warm droning synths, clacking keyboards, malevolent static, chirping cicadas, and the click and whine of dot matrix printers. The film’s dreamy nostalgia soon becomes an analog nightmare as Conor finds himself trapped in a low-tech but high-stakes video game. 

It’s as real as the feelings you feel.

This season, we honor the extraordinary legacy of Rob Reiner with some screenings of one of his most beloved films: the timeless and irresistibly funny fairy-tale adventure The Princess Bride.

When young Buttercup (Robin Wright in a luminous breakout performance) loses her true love Westley (Cary Elwes), she vows never to love again. Until fate, pirates, politics, giants, miracles, and rodents of unusual size intervene, of course. Told through the framing device of a grandfather (Peter Falk) reading a bedtime story to his skeptical grandson (Fred Savage), the film becomes a celebration of imagination itself.

Few filmmakers moved so effortlessly between genres as Rob Reiner. From coming-of-age classics to sharp-edged comedy to pulse-pounding thrillers, his filmography is a tour of American movie magic. But The Princess Bride remains his most universally cherished creation. 

We’ve been waiting to give you the good news for months: legendary director Lav Diaz’s new film, Magellan, is finally sailing on over to The Frida Cinema!

At the dawn of the modern era, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (Gael García Bernal) navigated a fleet of ships to Southeast Asia, attempting the first voyage across the vast Pacific Ocean. On reaching the Malay Archipelago, the crew pushed to the brink of madness in the harshness of the high seas and overwhelming natural beauty of the islands, Magellan’s obsession leads to a rebellion and reckoning with the consequences of power.

A vast, globe-spanning epic from Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz (Norte, The End Of History), Magellan presents the colonization of the Philippines as a primal, shocking encounter with the unknown and a radical retelling of European narratives of discovery and exploration.

Writer/Director Mark Fischbach’s (known to so many people around the world as @markiplier) brand new science fiction horror film Iron Lung is making its way to The Frida Cinema for limited weekend run!

Set in a post-apocalyptic future where an event known as “The Quiet Rapture” caused all known stars and habitable planets in the universe to disappear, a convict is sent to search an ocean of blood discovered on a desolate moon, using a small submarine nicknamed the “Iron Lung”.

Kick off 2026 with us as See It On 16mm dusts off some well-loved (worn) prints of ignored exploitation, horror, and other off the radar films as we present our brand new Secret Grindhouse series!

What’s that mean? They’re gonna dig up some decaying prints and thread them up for genre fans! Most titles are either in a rights limbo, forgotten, or just need to be shown more appreciation. They’ll be playing blaxploitation, vansploitation, nunsploitation, kung fu, made-for-TV terrors, and everything else between!

Grab a ticket and watch as the secret movie unspools loud and proud on the big screen!