Ghost in the Shell
The Frida Cinema's seating is first-come, first-serve. For our Midnight Screenings, please plan on arriving by 11:30pm to ensure ample time for parking, picking up concessions, and securing optimal seats. Screening will begin promptly at midnight.
Director: Mamoru Oshii Run Time: 83 min. Release Year: 1995 Language: Japanese
Starring: Akio Otsuka, Atsuko Tanaka, Iemasa Kayumi, Koichi Yamadera, Yutaka Nakano
Before The Matrix, before Westworld—there was Ghost in the Shell. Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 cyberpunk landmark returns to the big screen for its 30th anniversary: a hypnotic, high-tech meditation on what it means to be alive in a world where the line between human and machine has all but vanished.
Set in a dystopian future where cybernetic enhancements are the norm and the human mind can be hacked, Ghost in the Shell follows Major Motoko Kusanagi—a special-ops agent in a synthetic body—on a mission to track a mysterious hacker known only as the Puppet Master. But as the investigation deepens, so does the existential dread: Where does the “self” reside when your body is hardware, your memories are code, and your soul—your ghost—is possibly just another program?
Blending hauntingly beautiful hand-drawn animation with early digital effects, Oshii’s vision is erily prescient. It’s a genre-defining anime that helped lay the groundwork for modern sci-fi as we know it.
These screenings will be presented in the film’s original Japanese language with English subtitles.