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The award-winning documentary The Shepherd And The Bear is coming to The Frida Cinema! And stick around after the film as we have an in-person discussion with the director of the film, Max Keegan!

Set high in the majestic French Pyrenees, The Shepherd And The Bear explores a conflict provoked by the reintroduction of brown bears in the midst of a traditional shepherding community. The film follows an aging shepherd who struggles to find a successor as bears prey on his flock, and a teenage boy who becomes obsessed with tracking the bears. Through its breathtaking cinematography and immersive storytelling, the film is a modern folktale about tradition, community, and humanity’s relationship with a vanishing natural world.

The Shepherd And The Bear won the Living with Wildlife Award at the 48th International Wildlife Film Festival and played at Margaret Mead Film Festival in the American Museum of Natural History, Santa Barbara, Big Sky Documentary, Visions du Réel, Full Frame, Sydney Film Festival, Salem Film Fest where it was nominated for the American Cinematography Magazine Award.

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The new concert film/documentary Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition is rocking its way to The Frida Cinema for two nights only!

With unprecedented access to the official archives and intimate recollections from the band, both current and past, Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition invites fans to experience one of the most iconic journeys in music history!

Spanning five decades, this electrifying documentary charts the band’s rise from the pubs of East London to the world’s biggest stadiums. Featuring exclusive interviews with band members and contributors such as Javier Bardem, Lars Ulrich and Chuck D, as well as all-new animated sequences of the band’s legendary mascot, Eddie, the film offers a rare and intimate look at Iron Maiden’s uncompromising vision and unwavering connection with their truly global army of fans.

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Segerstrom Center for the Arts is proud to present a completely free screening of the new documentary Four Rational People! 

The story follows the Emerson String Quartet as they embark on the final season of a fifty-year history that includes 9 GRAMMYS and thousands of concerts. Interweaving vivid memories with delicate observations of life on the road, the film explores the difficult decision to walk away from the things they cherish: the music they play and the friends they hold dear.

At once a frank examination of the tyranny of aging and a cri de cœur to pass the torch to a new generation, the film culminates with one final performance, leaving all to ponder what happens to us after the final curtain.

RSVP to get your tickets now!

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Billy Idol Should Be Dead, the brand new feature-length documentary tracing the life and career of the punk pioneer turned rock ‘n’ roll icon, is coming to The Frida Cinema for two nights only! 

Through never-before-seen archival and personal interviews with Idol, his family, peers and collaborators, the documentary digs deep intoBilly Idol’s emergence as a prototypical punk rocker, his meteoric rise as a global superstar in the MTV era and the myriad of challenges Idol had to overcome to not just survive, but to remain one of the most beloved figures in rock n roll, almost fifty years into his career and still selling out arenas around the world.

“[A] harrowing redemption story…the Billy Idol documentary is an excellent and expansively researched two-hour deep dive that traces Idol’s life and career in the familiar ‘Behind the Music’ format, but with long looks at peak eras and a depth of detail, both factual and emotional, that elevate it above that standard.”—Variety

“[A]wild and surprisingly heartfelt documentary…the film leaves no stone unturned in telling Idol’s improbable story.”—The Ankler

“A story about survival”—USA Today

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The unexpected, irreverent, and heartfelt new documentary André Is An Idiot is coming to The Frida Cinema for a limited engagement the last weekend of March!

When André Ricciardi, a self-proclaimed “idiot” for skipping the colonoscopy that could have saved him, learns he is dying, he turns his final chapter into an experiment in radical honesty, humor, and curiosity. A lifelong iconoclast and ad-industry provocateur, André has never done anything the conventional way, and confronting mortality proves no different: he picks up a camera, cracks a joke, and begins to ask the biggest questions of his life with disarming candor.

Winner of both the Audience Award and the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award in the U.S. Documentary category at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Andre Is An Idiot is a wildly life-affirming film about death and about the strange clarity that arrives when time suddenly becomes finite.

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Join 18th & Grand and FanMail Cinema Club in a special event screening and the Santa Ana Premiere of 18th & Grand: The Olympic Auditorium Story. The documentary delves into the history and cultural significance of an infamous downtown Los Angeles arena through first-hand accounts from attendees and stars of the Olympic’s ring, rink, and stage!

The Olympic was a hub of outrageous entertainment for generations, where heroes and villains often came from the neighborhoods of the city. 18th & Grand was the closing film for Slamdance, lauded in Hyperallergic and Film Threat, and the inspiration for a major museum exhibition at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes. 

Told through the distinctive voices of wrestlers, boxers, punks and skaters, 18th & Grand: The Olympic Auditorium Story remembers a lost, and more interesting L.A. Featuring John Doe (X), Julio César Chávez, Carlos Palomino, Mando Guerrero, The Destroyer, Gene LeBell, Roddy Piper and more!

Enjoy a post-film Q&A, meet World Champion boxer Carlos Palomino and shop from themed-vendors, including Keely’s Cake Studio, VideoHero VHS, facepainting from La Rainbow Fiesta, and take photos in our boxing-themed photo-op.

Q&A to follow the film including World Champion Boxer Carlos Palomino, Boxing Historian Gene Aguilera, family of luchador Mando “Superstar” Lopez!

Moderated by LA Times Columnist and Reporter Gustavo Arellano!

Doors: 1:00PM

Vending: 1:00PM-6:00PM

Film: 2:00PM

Q&A: Right after the film!

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. 

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Just Our Heart collects rituals and stories of human, ecological and colonial grief in order to set the experience of loss in a context of meaning for us who remain. Please join us for a special screening of the film, introduced by director Maartje Nevejan, on February 19th at 5:30PM!

This feature documentary by Amsterdam-based filmmaker Maartje Nevejan dives into the deep waters of grief—not only personal, but ecological, colonial, and spiritual. Sparked by the loss of her partner and the grief of her children in the face of ecological collapse, Nevejan resists centering her own story. Instead, she opens a space for something larger: a cinematic ritual that gathers four remarkable women—grief doulas, ritualists, spiritual disruptors—who guide others not toward closure, but transformation.

In collaboration with visionary ecologist Dr. Monica Gagliano and Zen priest and grief pioneer Roshi Joan Halifax, Just Our Heart expands the mourning room. It invites voices that are usually silenced: the dead, the exploited, the Earth herself. This is a film that doesn’t offer answers—it invites participation in something older than language: ritual as a way of relating to loss, and as a method of resistance.

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.

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Join us at The Frida Cinema for the Orange County premiere of the new documentary Earth’s Greatest Enemy, followed by a Q&A with co-director Abby Martin!

In Abby Martin’s second feature documentary, Earth’s Greatest Enemy suggests a hidden truth behind the climate crisis: the role of the U.S. military as the world’s largest institutional polluter. Drawing on powerful testimonies from veterans, scientists, and frontline communities, it explores how military operations poison ecosystems, accelerate global warming, and sacrifice the future for endless expansion. From Alaska’s melting glaciers to contaminated bases across the U.S. and toxic battlefields abroad, Earth’s Greatest Enemy delivers a provocative and unflinching examination of the untouchable institution playing an outsized role in the climate crisis.

Combining investigative journalism, striking visuals, and stories from impacted communities, the film challenges audiences to re-think the hidden costs of a global military empire and its planetary consequences.

To learn more about the film, watch the trailer, or buy tickets to this screening, go to: EarthsGreatestEnemy.com

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.

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The Last Class is a nuanced and deeply personal portrait of master educator Robert Reich teaching his final course and reflecting on a period of immense transformation, personally and globally. It is a love letter to education. The former Secretary of Labor might be famous for his public service, best-selling books, and viral social media posts, but he always considered teaching his true calling. Now, after over 40 years and an extraordinary 40,000 students, Reich is preparing for his last class.

Over the course of the film, Reich confronts the impending finality, and his own aging, with increasing candor, introspection, and, ultimately, emotion. He displays a rawness of feeling he has never shared publicly before. Drawing on his lifetime in politics, he uses his class, “Wealth and Poverty,” to offer us all a deeper look at why inequalities of income and wealth have widened significantly since the late 1970s, and why this poses dangerous risks to our society. One thousand students fill the biggest lecture hall on the UC Berkeley campus, the last class to receive Reich’s wisdom and exhortations not to accept that the world has to stay the way it is. His belief in the next generation’s ability to take on the fight is inspiring.

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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.

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