Now Playing & Coming Soon

Our Lost Films Of Covid series is delving into many of the films that we wished we played on the big screen during the years of 2020 and 2021, but with The Painter And The Thief , we get to explore titles that weren't even on our radar at that time! When two of artist Barbora Kysilkova’s most valuable paintings are stolen from a gallery at Frogner in Oslo, the police are able to find the thief after a few days, but the paintings are nowhere to be found. Barbora goes to the trial in hopes of finding clues, but instead she ends up asking the thief if she can paint a portrait of him. This will be the start of a very unusual friendship. Over three years, the cinematic documentary follows the incredible story of the artist looking for her stolen paintings, while at the same time turning the thief into art. The Painter and the Thief asks whether understanding another person can ever truly heal them—or ourselves. We can't think of a better way to end our series on films of the Covid era that never got to be seen on the big screen. Thank you to our friends at Filmbot for their support in presenting this amazing series.

Wolfwalkers played at our pop-up drive-in in 2020, but now with our Lost Films Of Covid series, we can bring it to you on the big screen! In a time of superstition and magic, when wolves are seen as demonic and nature an evil to be tamed, a young apprentice hunter comes to Ireland with her father to wipe out the last pack. But when she saves a wild native girl, their friendship leads her to discover the world of the Wolfwalkers and transform her into the very thing her father is tasked to destroy. Told with exuberant motion and striking watercolor design, Wolfwalkers is both a thrilling adventure and a heartfelt allegory about empathy and freedom. Don't miss a chance to see this beautifully animated film  on the big screen! Thank you to our friends at Filmbot for their support in presenting this amazing series.

David Lowery’s The Green Knight is coming back to The Frida Cinema just in time for a special Christmas season screening! And as an added bonus, we are excited to announce we'll be doing a post-screening Q&A with Production Designer Jade Healy! Dev Patel stars as Sir Gawain, a would-be knight whose perilous quest leads him through a landscape of ghosts, giants, and everything in-between. On Christmas Day, a mysterious giant figure--the Green Knight, half man and half tree — rides into Camelot and challenges any knight to strike him with his axe, on the condition that the Green Knight may return the same blow one year later. Seeking to prove his worth, Gawain steps forward to stand up to the task. The rest, they say, is the stuff of Arthurian legend. Depicted with painterly precision, The Green Knight crafts a medieval world that feels both ancient and alive. The mud, candlelight, snow, and shadows will remain stuck in our brains forever and is a definitive entry into the new Christmas cult canon.

Celebrate 75 years since the original release of Akira Kurosawa's 1950 masterpiece Rashomon with a new 2K restoration from Janus Films! A riveting psychological thriller that investigates the nature of truth and the meaning of justice, Rashomon is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made. Four people give different accounts of a man’s murder and the rape of his wife, which director Akira Kurosawa presents with striking imagery and an ingenious use of flashbacks. This eloquent masterwork and international sensation revolutionized film language and introduced Japanese cinema—and a commanding new star by the name of Toshiro Mifune—to the Western world.

Our Page To Screen series is closing out the year with legendary director Peter Weir's Dead Poets Society, based on the book by Nancy H. Kleinbaum. Set in an elite New England prep school in 1959, the story follows a group of students whose lives are upended by the arrival of John Keating (Robin Williams, in one of his most beloved performances), an English teacher who urges them to think for themselves, seize the day, and find their own voices in a world determined to quiet them. Few films capture the spark of youth and the power of a great teacher like Dead Poets Society. All these years later, it remains a moving tribute to the teachers who changed us along the way. 

Celebrate this holiday season with Greta Gerwig’s joyful, heart-full adaptation of Little Women from 2019. Starring an A+ cast of Saoirse Ronan, Florenge Pugh, Emma Watson, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, and Timothee Chalamet, it's the perfect seasonal escape on the big screen.  The film follows the four March sisters—Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth—as they navigate love and heartbreak in Civil War–era New England. Told across intertwined timelines, the film traces their journey from spirited girlhood to adulthood as they fight to define their own futures. Bring your friends, bring your family, and ring in the holidays with a film that celebrates sisterhood and the power of following your own path. Little Women has been adapted many times, but Gerwig's version is the best interpretation yet, and might just be her magnum opus as director.

Sex, bugs, and rock n' roll! Our final In Defense Of...pick from 2026 comes courtesy of our Director Of Memberships, Bobby, as he's chosen the 1996 cult comedy Joe's Apartment!  Entirely a product of MTV’s weirdo golden age, Joe’s Apartment follows a fresh-faced transplant to New York who moves into the only place he can afford — a rundown East Village unit already occupied by an army of wisecracking, singing, dancing cockroaches. Jerry O’Connell plays the perpetually overwhelmed Joe, whose attempts to survive city life quickly collapse under the chaos of his new six-legged roommates. With its mix of practical puppetry and anarchic cartoon energy, the film has become a cult favorite for anyone nostalgic for the heyday of midnight movies and VHS oddities.  About In Defense Of...: Who says critics and audiences get it right every time!? Revisit some of cinema’s most polarizing films, selected and presented by members of our staff!

Our December edition of Hallucinations is the Christmas classic Dial Code Santa Claus aka Deadly Games aka 3615 code Père Noël aka Hide and Freak. Before Home Alone… there was Dial Code Santa Claus, a French holiday thriller where a tech-savvy kid must defend his mansion from a psychotic man in a Santa suit. What starts as whimsical turns tense, then brutal, then full-on survival horror—all under twinkling lights and fake snow. It’s a fairy tale slasher mixed with a hyperactive 80s toy commercial from hell. ’Tis the season for tinsel, trauma, and booby traps. Hosted by Polygon’s editor-in-chief Chris Plante, Hallucinations is a monthly event that spotlights movies that challenge our expectations of story, style, and “good taste”. We invite guests to bond over films that change what we expect from the medium, the world, and themselves. So come early, stay late, make friends, and watch something strange, surprising, or just shamelessly sick.

Our dearly beloved Director Of Operations, Martin, is leaving us at the conclusion of this year, so we wanted to give him a proper send-off by letting him program four of his favorite films. The penultimate film in his series, entitled The Last Dance, is Ulrike Ottinger's Ticket Of No Return! This first film in Ulrike Ottinger’s Berlin Trilogy follows an unnamed woman (frequent Ottinger collaborator Tabea Blumenschein) as she drinks her way through Berlin’s various watering holes. Underscoring the scrutiny society applies to “women behaving badly,” with a literal Greek chorus questioning her actions, Ottinger’s film practically predicts the double standard imposed on late 20th-century female artists like Courtney Love. Premiering at Cannes Critics Week in 1980 and today one of the artist’s most celebrated films, Ticket of No Return proves that “the New German Cinema didn’t live and die with Fassbinder” (Village Voice).

Join OC Pride, Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, and the entire Muppet gang as they bring Charles Dickens’ beloved tale to life with The Muppet Christmas Carol! Charles Dickens’ classic story gets the Muppet treatment as Ebenezer Scrooge (an extremely committed Michael Caine), a cold-hearted miser, is visited on Christmas Eve by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. With help from Kermit’s Bob Cratchit, Miss Piggy’s Emily Cratchit, and a chorus of singing, joke-cracking Muppets, Scrooge is shown the impact of his greed — and given one last chance to open his heart and embrace the spirit of Christmas. A little bit of Muppet mayhem is exactly what every holiday season needs. Don't miss your chance to see this one on the big screen!

Joe Dante's Christmas time creature feature comedy Gremlins is one of our very favorite holiday films, so let's play it again!  The story begins when Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) receives a mysterious, adorable creature called a Mogwai as a Christmas gift from his father. With strict care instructions—no bright light, no water, and no feeding after midnight—Billy struggles to follow the rules, inadvertently unleashing a horde of mischievous, destructive gremlins on his quiet town. As the creatures wreak havoc, Billy and his girlfriend Kate (Phoebe Cates) race to stop the chaos and save their community. Gremlins remains a beloved cult classic that redefined holiday-themed films and practically invented the need for the PG-13 rating. It's funny, scary, and filled with holiday cheer all at the same time. 

The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit? More like The Bat, The Cat, and The Penguin! Tim Burton's 1992 pop masterpiece Batman Returns is coming back to The Frida Cinema! We believe wholeheartedly that it's the ultimate Christmas movie, filled to the brim with gothic spectacle and holiday glam.  The monstrous Penguin, who dwells in the sewers beneath Gotham, joins up with corrupt mayoral candidate Max Shreck to topple the Batman once and for all. But when Shreck's timid assistant Selina Kyle finds out, and Shreck tries to kill her, she's transformed into the sexy Catwoman. She teams up with the Penguin and Shreck to destroy Batman, but sparks fly unexpectedly when she confronts the caped crusader. With an all-star cast of Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Christopher Walken, and in incomparable Michelle Pfeiffer, Burton took the success of Batman (1989), and doubled down in the best way possible, creating the template that every sequel should strive for. 

A candy-coated fever dream of holiday excess, Jim Carrey's How The Grinch Stole Christmas is finally making its way to our screens! When it hit theaters in 2000, How the Grinch Stole Christmas wasn’t just another family holiday movie — it was a full-blown pop-culture phenomenon. Ron Howard and his crew turned Dr. Seuss’s 1957 classic into a live-action spectacle dripping with turn-of-the-millennium maximalism. Carrey’s Grinch is still one of the great comic performances of the era mixing weird creature effects with a full-blown existential meltdown. It’s the role that cemented him as the only actor unafraid (or unhinged enough) to try to out-Seuss Dr. Seuss. Two decades later, How the Grinch Stole Christmas remains a strange and wonderful artifact of a bygone blockbuster era: a holiday movie made with the scale of a theme-park ride. It was easy to write off a movie like this at the time, but honestly? I don't think we realized how good we had it. 

Cinematic Void is closing our their year at The Frida Cinema by presenting a special 30th anniversary screening of the The Day Of The Beast, putting the "antichrist" in "Christmas"!  The story revolves around a Basque Roman Catholic priest dedicated to committing as many sins as possible, a death metal salesman from Carabanchel, and the Italian host of a TV show on the occult. These go on a literal "trip" through Christmas-time Madrid to hunt for and prevent the reincarnation of the Antichrist. Director Álex de la Iglesia balances slapstick comedy and supernatural mayhem with ease, making The Day of the Beast is a gonzo cult classic that filled with crowd-pleasing holiday cheer.

Bust out those plastic spoons! Tommy Wiseau's enduring 2003 cult classic The Room is back at The Frida for its monthly screening! Wiseau's peerless magnum opus finds the auteur who shaped a generation taking on the arts of acting, writing, casting, directing, editing and more. What's even more remarkable: he's mastered them all. The multi-talented director stars as Johnny, a big-time banker working in gorgeously shot San Francisco. His fiancée Lisa, seemingly a happy part of a successful relationship, has wandering eyes…for Tommy's best friend Mark. Cinema has never witnessed such betrayal! An intense, sensual thriller--at least as it was intended by Wiseau--The Room is an intricately knit web of sweet secrets and bitter lies that interrogates the very form of drama itself, as well as a truly unforgettable piece of cinema.

An annual holiday tradition unlike any other, Bekah's Cozy Christmas Double is back for a third year! And this time, she's picked the dynamic duo of The Thin Man and After The Thin Man!  The Thin Man: Retired detective Nick Charles (William Powell) and his quick-witted, glamorous wife Nora (Myrna Loy) return to New York for the holidays, only to get swept into a murder investigation involving a missing inventor, a nervous family, and a trail of clues that only Nick’s reluctant brilliance can untangle. Their martini-fueled banter and impeccable chemistry turn a standard whodunit into one of the era’s most sparkling comedies. After The Thin Man: Picking up right where the first film ends, Nick and Nora return to San Francisco, where a family dinner quickly spirals into another murder case—this time involving Nora’s unstable cousin, her missing husband, and a lovesick third party played by a young James Stewart. Once again, Nick reluctantly takes the case, and once again Nora dives in with enthusiasm, cocktails in hand. Seen together, these films showcase the rare magic of screen icons William Powell and Myrna Loy: two actors whose charm mixed so well with soft cynicism. Their style defined a whole era of sophisticated studio comedies and shaped the DNA of the modern mystery-romance, proving that a detective story could be as much about love as it is about clues.

Across our entire staff, if there was a movie we could all agree on being the definitive holiday season masterpiece of the past 25 years, it would be Todd Hayne's Carol. Starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara (are you kidding me?), the film is set in 1950s New York, and follows a shy young shopgirl and aspiring photographer, who becomes captivated by Carol Aird, an elegant woman trapped in a failing marriage. As the two grow closer, their connection deepens into a forbidden romance that threatens Carol’s custody battle for her daughter. Forced onto a road trip that becomes both an escape and a reckoning, the women must decide whether their love can survive the scrutiny and constraints of their time. In the years since its release, Carol has become a pop-cultural touchstone that perfectly blends a holiday-season staple and  queer cinematic landmark. For pop culture purposes, it's perhaps the most GIFed slow-burn romance of the internet age. Its influence can be seen all over the rise of prestige LGBTQ+ storytelling across screens big and small. Some movies change your life forever.

Horror Movie Night presented by HorrorBuzz is back! And this time they're celebrating 45 years of the George C Scott masterpiece The Changeling! After a tragic event happens, composer John Russell moves to Seattle to try to overcome it and build a new and peaceful life in a lonely big house that has been uninhabited for many years. But, soon after, the obscure history of such an old mansion and his own past begin to haunt him. Horror Movie Night takes it to another level with a full night of entertainment, including a themed HMN Video Preshow, Trivia, Games, Prizes, and another outstanding horror short from HorrorBuzz’s The Screaming Room Film Festival at Midsummer Scream. Doors open and pre-show begins promptly at 7:30 pm, so arrive early! This program is a venue rental engagement. The views and opinions expressed in this program do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of The Frida Cinema or its staff.

The members have spoken! We know it only came out a couple of years ago, but our Members Only screening for December is The Holdovers! A curmudgeonly instructor at a New England prep school is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually, he forms an unlikely bond with one of them — a damaged, brainy troublemaker — and with the school’s head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam. Paul Giamatti’s performance as Paul Hunham cemented him as the most beloved sad-sack teacher since Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society (which we are also playing in December!), Dominic Sessa’s breakthrough performance turned him into a sudden indie darling, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s heartbreaking turn became one of the year’s most celebrated, earning her an Oscar at the 2024 Academy Awards. We love our Film Club Members, and our monthly exclusive Film Club Members Only screenings are just one of our ways of thanking them for their support! Not a Film Club Member yet? CLICK HERE to join our growing family of fellow film-lovers and Frida Cinema supporters!

One of the greatest achievements by Akira Kurosawa, Ikiru shows the director at his most compassionate—affirming life through an explora­tion of death. We are are closing out the December portion of our retrospective on the legendary director'sw work with a brand 4K restoration of it thanks to our friends at Janus Films!  Takashi Shimura beautifully portrays Kanji Watanabe, an aging bureaucrat with stomach cancer who is impelled to find meaning in his final days. Presented in a radically conceived two­part structure and shot with a perceptive, humanistic clarity of vision, Ikiru is a multifaceted look at what it means to be alive.

Our dearly beloved Director Of Operations, Martin, is leaving us at the conclusion of this year, so we wanted to give him a proper send-off by letting him program four of his favorite films. The final film in his series, entitled The Last Dance, is legendary filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski's Camera Buff! Filip buys an 8mm movie camera when his first child is born. Because it's the first camera in town, he's named official photographer by the local Party boss. His horizons widen when he is sent to regional film festivals with his first works but his focus on movie making also leads to domestic strife and philosophical dilemmas. Camera Buff is a quietly foundational film that predicted the world we live in, where everyone is a cameraman and every moment might be a movie. It also marked Kieslowski's international breakthrough as a director with something to say. Without it, we may never have gotten The Decalogue, The Double Life of Véronique, or the Three Colors trilogy, all of which we intend to screen at The Frida Cinema in 2026.

See the new 4K restoration (thanks to our friends at Janus Films) of legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film Seven Samurai on the big screen as we kick off the new year with the legendary Japanese director's magnum opus! Set in 16th-century Japan, the film stars Toshiro Mifune in his iconic role as the wild and charismatic Kikuchiyo, and Takashi Shimura as the wise and experienced leader Kambei. The samurai, each with their unique skills and backgrounds, band together to train the villagers in self-defense, forming new bonds as the impending danger draws nearer. Nominated for two Academy Awards, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, and Best Costume Design, and winner of the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Seven Samurai remains a benchmark of world cinema, celebrated for its profound impact on the action genre, and its enduring narrative of courage and community.

Janus Films has bestowed upon us a brand new 4K restoration of Throne Of Blood, the vivid, visceral Macbeth adaptation directed by Akira Kurosawa that can't be missed on the big screen! Kurosawa sets Shakespeare’s definitive tale of ambition and duplicity in a ghostly, fog-enshrouded landscape in feudal Japan. As a hardened warrior who rises savagely to power, Toshiro Mifune gives a remarkable, animalistic performance, as does Isuzu Yamada as his ruthless wife. Throne of Blood fuses classical Western tragedy with formal elements taken from Noh theater to create an unforgettable cinematic experience.

Cinematic Void is back to invade The Frida Cinema with their annual January Giallo festivities, and this time they've presenting Mario Bava's 1971 proto-Slasher A Bay Of Blood!  The story follows an elderly heiress that is killed by her husband who wants control of her fortunes. What ensues is an all-out murder spree as relatives and friends attempt to reduce the inheritance playing field, complicated by some teenagers who decide to camp out in a dilapidated building on the estate. Few films in the Giallo canon cut as deep as A Bay Of Blood. Often cited as a major influence on Friday the 13th and a dozen other slashers, it’s Bava's most cold-blooded (red-blooded?) masterpiece. Don't miss your chance to see this newly restored cult classic on the silver screen!

The second film presented by Cinematic Void as part of this year's January Giallo at The Frida is a free screening of A Hyena In The Safe, now with a brand new 4K restoration courtesy of Celluloid Dreams! One safe. Six keys. Six robbers, each expecting their cut of a diamond heist when they finally meet to divide their spoils after months in hiding. But before they can open the safe that guards their glittering hoard, they are mysteriously killed, one by one. With fear and suspicion growing among the shrinking group of survivors, it becomes clear that one of them is trying to take all the diamonds for themselves! Thank you to Celluloid Dreams for letting us present this beautifully restored version, bringing the film in high definition to the big screen for the first time!

A grand-scale adventure as only Akira Kurosawa could make one, The Hidden Fortress is coming to The Frida Cinema with a brand new 4K restoration thanks to the fine folks at Janus Films! The film stars the inimitable Toshiro Mifune as a general charged with guarding his defeated clan’s princess (a fierce Misa Uehara) as the two smuggle royal treasure across hostile territory. Accompanying them are a pair of bumbling, conniving peasants who may or may not be their friends. This rip-roaring ride is among the director’s most beloved films and was a primary influence on George Lucas’s Star Wars. The Hidden Fortress delivers Kurosawa’s trademark deft blend of wry humor, breathtaking action, and compassionate humanity.

Akira Kurosawa kicked off the 1960s with his underrated film noir piece The Bad Sleep Well, screening at The Frida Cinema as part of our ongoing retrospective on the works of the legendary Japanese director. The story is simple: a vengeful young man marries the daughter of a corrupt industrialist in order to seek justice for his father's suicide. What follows is a film that combines elements of Hamlet and noir to chilling effect in exposing the corrupt boardrooms of postwar corporate Japan.  Continuing his legendary collaboration with Toshiro Mifune, The Bad Sleep Well is a lesser-known stroke of genius in the filmmaker's canon, but great nonetheless. See it on the big screen, where it rarely plays!

The Oscars Can Suck It! Film Threat’s Award This! is the only award show where anyone can attend by simply buying a ticket. (Try getting tickets to the Oscars!) This year, Film Threat's Award This! event celebrates a diverse group of truly independent movies! The Award This! nominees were selected from over 2,000 indie films reviewed by Film Threat in 2025. The utterly unique Award This! event includes bold and diverse categories including Indie Sci-Fi, Indie Horror, Indie Comedy, Indie Action/Thriller, WTF Indie, Indie Romantic Comedy, Indie Drama, Indie LGBTQ+ Film, Music Documentary, Pop Culture Documentary, Socially-Relevant Documentary, Best Director, Best Directress, Indie Made for Less Than the Contents of an Oscar Gift Bag (Under $100K), and Indie Movie of the Year. For more info, go to: FilmThreat.com or AwardsThis.com! Please join us for this very special evening honoring the best indie films! The schedule is below: 6PM - Red Carpet Arrivals and Cocktail Party 8PM - Award This! Show 10PM - After Party (location TBA) The tickets that are available to the public are: $125 VIP Tickets (Limited Availability) (Admission to the main room, drink tickets, + a gift bag) $50 Gold Tickets (Admission to the overflow party room, drink tickets, + a gift bag) This program is a venue rental engagement. The views and opinions expressed in this program do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of The Frida Cinema or its staff.

We're kicking off February with a Samurai double feature of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Sanjuro, both screening with brand new 4K restorations courtesy of the incredible talents at Janus Films! Yojimbo: A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon and sake merchant Tokuemon to hire him as a personal bodyguard, then artfully sets in motion a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and unscrupulous men. Sanjuro: Jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan's evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a "proper" samurai on its ear. Less brazen in tone than its predecessor but equally entertaining, this classic character's return is a masterpiece in its own right.

Grab a slice and skate on down to The Frida Cinema as Moviebusters presents a very special screening of the 1990 cult classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles! And make sure to stick around after the screening as martial artist, actor, and the man behind Donatello’s legendary moves, Ernie Reyes Jr joins us for an in-person Q&A! Before superheroes ruled the multiplex, four brothers from the New York sewers saved the world with martial arts and heart. Director Steve Barron’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a box-office surprise and a practical-effects marvel. Produced on the edge of indie ingenuity, the film blended Jim Henson’s Creature Shop wizardry with street-level grit, creating a tone that felt mythic. Beneath the pizza jokes and wisecracks was something sincere--growing up in a hard (shelled?) city. This program is a venue rental engagement. The views and opinions expressed in this program do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of The Frida Cinema or its staff. Membership discounts and comp passes do not apply. Doors open at 4:00PM and the film will begin at 5:00PM.

A brand new 4K restoration of High And Low is coming to The Frida Cinema as part of fourteen film retrospective on the films of Akira Kurosawa! Thank you to Janus Films for restoring this masterpiece and allowing us to play it. The story of High And Low follows an executive of a Yokohama shoe company becomes a victim of extortion when his chauffeur's son is kidnapped by mistake and held for ransom. This highly influential domestic drama, adapted Ed McBain's detective novel King's Ransom, Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a diabolical treatise on contemporary Japanese society.

Akira Kurosawa's three hour epic, Red Beard, is screening at The Frida Cinema with a brand new 4K restoration via our friends at Janus Films! Red Beard chronicles the tumultuous relationship between an arrogant young doctor and a compassionate clinic director. Toshiro Mifune, in his last role for Kurosawa, gives a powerhouse performance as the dignified yet empathic director who guides his pupil to maturity, teaching the embittered intern to appreciate the lives of his destitute patients. Perfectly capturing the look and feel of 19th-century Japan, Kurosawa weaves a fascinating tapestry of time, place, and emotion.

The penultimate film in our Akira Kurosawa retrospective is his epic 1985 masterpiece, Ran, now restored in glorious 4K thanks to Rialto Pictures! A grand and visually breathtaking epic that transposes Shakespeare’s King Lear into the chaotic feudal era of 16th-century Japan of Shakespeare’s King Lear, Ran stars screen legend Tatsuya Nakadai as Hidetora Ichimonji, an aging warlord who decides to divide his vast domain among his three sons in hopes of securing peace in his final years. Instead, his decision ignites a violent power struggle, as betrayal and ambition shatter his family and plunge the region into civil war. Stripped of power and driven into madness, Hidetora becomes a ghost of his former self, wandering through the wreckage of a world he once ruled. With its masterful use of color, and meticulously staged battle sequences, Ran is both an intimate tragedy, and a large-scale historical spectacle.  In delivering his haunting and majestic summation of his lifelong explorations of power, betrayal, and the devastating consequences of human ambition, Kurosawa employs sweeping landscapes, intricate battle sequences, and vivid color symbolism to create a world teetering on the edge of chaos. About the Restoration Ran’s original 1985 production was made possible through a French-Japanese collaboration between Kadokawa and French producer Serge Silberman, with distribution later handled by companies such as Orion and Studiocanal. That international partnership was rekindled decades later when Kadokawa and Studiocanal brought on French laboratory Éclair to restore the film in 4K under Studiocanal’s supervision, using the original negative as its source. Much of the restoration was completed manually, frame by frame, with color grading approved by Masaharu Ueda, one of Ran’s three cinematographers and a longtime collaborator of Kurosawa.

The past, present, and future. One man's dreams...for every dreamer. We are concluding our fourteen film retrospective paying tribute to the great Akira Kurosawa with his surrealist masterpiece Dreams. Eight visually rich vignettes drawn from Kurosawa’s own dreams—fox weddings and vanished orchards, a soldier’s ghosts, a walk through Van Gogh’s canvases, nuclear nightmares, and a water-mill utopia—meditate on childhood, art, mortality, and humanity’s uneasy bond with nature. Dreams holds a unique place in Akira Kurosawa’s career and reputation. It’s often regarded as one of his most personal and spiritual works--a literal painting of his imagination come to life. Don't miss a chance to see it on the big screen!