The brand new Afrofuturist film Memory of Princess Mumbi is coming to The Frida Cinema!

In 2093, filmmaker Kuve travels to Umata to document the aftermath of a war that revived ancient kingdoms. There, he meets Mumbi, who challenges him to make his film without the use of AI. As Kuve searches for his own voice, he begins to realize that even in a broken world, beauty can be found in the small human moments we often overlook.

The film premiered at Venice Days (Giornate degli Autori) in 2025 and went on to TIFF, BFI London, Zurich Film Festival (where it won the Critics’ Jury Award for Best Swiss Film), and San Francisco International Film Festival (where it received an Honorable Mention in the Global Visions category).

Certified Frida Favorite Jane Schoenbrun (We’re All Going To The World’s Fair, I Saw The TV Glow) is back with their latest mindf**k, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, starring the supernova duo of Hannah Einbender and Gillian Anderson!

After years of slapdash sequels and waning fandom, the Camp Miasma slasher franchise is handed over to an enthusiastic young director for resurrection. But when she visits the original’s star, a now-reclusive actress shrouded in mystery, the two women fall into a blood-soaked world of desire, fear, and delirium.

Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in 2026, the early reviews for Camp Miasma were passionate, promising a wildly entertaining exploration of the slasher film, erotic pleasure, and everything in between. The words “gonzo” and “pop art” were also being thrown around, which you know we love!

Join us August 27–30 at The Frida Cinema for four exciting days celebrating independent short films and the filmmakers who bring them to life.

This year’s festival will feature a wide variety of short-film screening blocks, filmmaker Q&As, educational conversations, industry panels, networking mixers, special events, and an awards ceremony!

From experimental films, animation, drama, horror, and comedy to student films, Reel Ladies, and Rainbow Reels, audiences will have opportunities to discover bold independent work and connect directly with the people behind the films.

In the underworld of 1970s Rio de Janeiro, the feared The Devil Queen rules a drug cartel from the back room of a brothel. Draped in green eyeshadow and menace, she commands loyalty with a jackknife that serves equally for shaving legs and slitting throats. Her grip on power begins to falter as rival factions–favela gangsters, drag queens, and sex workers, turn on one another in a violent struggle to claim her throne, exposing a world where those excluded from bourgeois society fight for dominance on the margins.

Directed by Antônio Carlos de Fontoura during Brazil’s military dictatorship, this lurid tale is loosely inspired by the legendary 1930s gangster João Francisco dos Santos. The film reimagines the figure in a 1970s setting as an early, provocative representation of queerness. As The Devil Queen, Milton Gonçalves delivers a striking performance that destabilizes rigid notions of masculinity, dissolving the binary of macho and queen into something volatile and unforgettable.

Before Na Hong-jin returns to the big screen with his long-awaited new film Hope, revisit the modern masterpiece that cemented him as one of the most visionary filmmakers working in genre cinema. Released in 2016 to worldwide acclaim, The Wailing is an ambitious and utterly unforgettable descent into evil that continues to haunt audiences a decade later.

When a mysterious stranger arrives in a remote South Korean village, a series of brutal murders and unexplained illnesses begin to spread. Tasked with investigating the increasingly bizarre events, a bumbling local policeman finds himself caught in a waking nightmare.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest horror films of the 21st century, The Wailing is occult horror at its finest and most tense. Its influence can be felt throughout contemporary genre filmmaking, and its final moments remain among the most chilling ever committed to film. 

For our final screening in our Broadway Thursdays: Segerstrom Center at The Frida series, we’re dying to bring you the wickedly funny cult classic Death Becomes Her!

Longtime rivals Madeline Ashton and Helen Sharp will stop at nothing to outshine one another, until a mysterious potion promises youth and beauty forever. But immortality comes with a few unexpected side effects, and their decades-long feud quickly descends into increasingly outrageous acts of revenge, all while their bewildered plastic surgeon Ernest Menville is caught in the middle.

Years ahead of its time, Death Becomes Her blends razor-sharp satire with groundbreaking visual effects and gloriously camp performances from Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, and Isabella Rossellini. It’s the kind of deliciously over-the-top crowd-pleaser that only gets better with age.