AAVCLUB @ AFS Cinema

*$4 off with code: AAAFF$4

Applicable for additional showtimes of the films listed below as well. Check AFS Cinema schedule for most updated showtimes.

AMERICAN DOCTOR

Directed by Poh Si Teng | USA/Occupied Palestine/Malaysia
2026, 1h 31min, DCP

“It is a necessary watch because it dares its audience not to look away, forcing the question not only of whose story is told, but whose deaths matter and make headlines.”
—Murtada Alfadl, Variety

“A documentary born from — and in constant dialogue with — that gnawing sense of helplessness.”
—David Ehrlich, Indiewire

Sep. 4-8 | From Oscar®-nominated and Emmy® Award-winning filmmaker Poh Si Teng, AMERICAN DOCTOR follows three American physicians — Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian — united by a single oath to save lives. After volunteering in besieged hospitals in Gaza, they return home determined to fight for the patients and colleagues they left behind, taking their battle from the front lines of war to the halls of Congress.

THIS IS NOT A FILM

Directed by Jafar Panahi | Iran
2011, 1h 16min, DCP, In Farsi with English subtitles.

“Funny, moving, and rich with meaning … the very existence of this movie is a gift.”
—Slate

“It’s a political statement, an act of defiance, a master class in one auteur’s body of work and process, and a document of a life unseen. But above all, it’s a gripping entertainment.”
—The Village Voice

“Meditates with touching simplicity on the very nature of filmmaking … one of cinema’s rare masterpieces of truth.”
—Mubi Notebook

“It’s a cry from the heart of an artist compelled to create, tell stories, and respond to hostile, confounding realities.”
—The Washington Post

Sep. 8, 12 | This directly autobiographical documentary by Jafar Panahi and his collaborator Mojtaba Mirtahmasb was made during the filmmaker’s house arrest when he was forbidden, for political reasons, from doing the one thing he cares most about in the world: making cinema. It portrays Panahi’s home life under these restrictive conditions and is in and of itself a defiant gesture. THIS IS NOT A FILM was smuggled out of Iran on a USB drive that was baked into a cake, and subsequently screened at many international film festivals and won international awards.

THE HOLE

Directed by Tsai Ming-liang
Taiwan, 1998, 1h 29min, 35mm, In Mandarin with English subtitles.

“THE HOLE proves to be an eerily prophetic and timely movie, perhaps better now than it ever was.”
—San Francisco Examiner

“One of the best samples of the Taiwanese New Wave.”
—Asian Movie Pulse

“A deadpan musical about seeking a friend for the end of the world.”
—WBUR Boston

Sep. 11, 14 | Presented in a newly struck 35mm print, approved by Tsai Ming-liang. The end of the world has never been more in tune. A hole in the floor bridges two apartments, quarantined amid the spread of a strange pandemic. A jazzy sci-fi/musical original, set to the rhythms of the apocalypse, from director Tsai Ming-liang (GOODBYE, DRAGON INN).

TAXI

Directed by Jafar Panahi | Iran
2015, 1h 22min, DCP, In Farsi with English subtitles.

“Often extremely funny, always thoughtful, the movie transcends its static nature to become a deeper picture of modern Iran than any news story could offer.”
—New York Post

“A sublime piece of cinema … it ranks among the director’s finest work.”
—Los Angeles Times

“This is a movie that you will admire both for its courage and its creativity.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

Sep. 15, 18, 19 | In this hybrid narrative with documentary elements, Jafar Panahi, forbidden by the Iranian state from making films, becomes a taxi driver in Tehran. His dashcam records his interactions with a variety of people, some funny, some deeply moving. Winner of the Golden Bear at Berlin and the FIPRESCI Prize.

NO BEARS

Directed by Jafar Panahi | Iran
2022, 1h 47min, DCP, In Farsi, Azerbaijani, and Turkish with English Subtitles

“A brilliant movie — an intricate and layered drama that somehow manages to be funny, angry, playful, and despairing by turns”
—NPR

“NO BEARS shows the influence of Panahi’s mentor Abbas Kiarostami … another penetrating, highly accomplished work by a master filmmaker.”
—RogerEbert.com

“Defiant, endlessly resourceful, and gripping cinema.”
—The Irish Times

Sep. 22, 26 | Jafar Panahi, playing himself as a film director under house arrest in Iran, is trying to make a film remotely via livestream with frustrating results. When he attempts to cross the border to direct his subjects directly, he finds himself in a village quarrel. A meta-narrative about Panahi’s own struggles that somehow also succeeds as an absurdist comedy..

MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki | Japan
1988, 1h 29min, DCP, Screenings before 6pm are dubbed, screenings after 6pm are subtitled

“An otherworldly tale of childhood and a definitive work of imagination.”
—Empire

“It is a little sad, a little scary, a little surprising, and a little informative, just like life itself. It depends on a situation instead of a plot, and suggests that the wonder of life and the resources of imagination supply all the adventure you need.”
—Roger Ebert

Oct. 3, 4 | Based on the rich childhood fantasy life of Hayao Miyazaki, MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO is a classic that is just as engaging for daydreaming adults as it is for kids. Roger Ebert called this one of the five best films for children, and we don’t disagree. Screenings that begin at 6 PM or later are subtitled. Screenings that start before 6 PM are dubbed in English.

KWAIDAN

Directed by Masaki Kobayashi | Japan
1965, 3h 3min, In Japanese with English subtitles.

“Both gorgeous and scary … It can still hold its own against the new generation of horror films still sourcing it.”
—Empire

“A horror picture with an extraordinarily delicate and sensuous quality.”
—The New York Times

“This is unsettling, uncanny horror, in which each individual tale leisurely builds to a macabre punchline.”
—BFI

Oct. 6, 10, 11 | Full of widescreen compositions of weird, delicate beauty, KWAIDAN will linger in your dreams long after you see it. Though KWAIDAN tells four ghost stories, the intent is never to shock, though the atmosphere of unexplainable otherness creates a miasma of fear and dread. Winner of a Special Jury Prize at Cannes.

JIGOKU

Directed by Nobuo Nakagawa | Japan
1960, 1h 41min, DCP, In Japanese with English subtitles.

“If you came for the art, this movie might be your little slice of heaven.”
—Japanese Film Archive

“JIGOKU is more than merely a boundary-pummeling classic of the horror genre — it’s as lurid a study of sin without salvation as the silver screen has ever seen.”
—Film Forum

Oct. 13, 17 | Join us for a trip to Buddhist Hell with a group of sinners in this shocking and visceral Japanese moral horror classic. Nobuo Nakagawa is a master of low-budget horror, and he doesn’t spare any of the sufferings of the afterlife in this colorful Cinemascope fantasia.

ONIBABA

Directed by Kaneto Shindo | Japan
1964, 1h 42min, 35mm, In Japanese with English subtitles.

“A chilling movie, a waking nightmare shot in icy monochrome, and filmed in a colossal and eerily beautiful wilderness … An erotic noir tale of psychological horror that is brilliantly subversive, and yet in its way intuitive and faithful.”
—The Guardian

Oct. 20, 24 | In Kaneto Shindô’s stately-but-shocking ghost story, a mother and daughter live on the fringes of a civil war, making a grim living killing soldiers who wander through their bamboo grove and selling their armor. As you might expect, the story takes a supernatural turn that is as stylish and spooky as anyone could hope. In 35mm.

KUNG FU HUSTLE

Directed by Stephen Chow | Hong Kong
2004, 1h 39min, DCP, in Mandarin and Cantonese with English subtitles

“Like Jackie Chan and Buster Keaton meet Quentin Tarantino and Bugs Bunny. You see how worked up you can get, watching a movie like this.”
–Roger Ebert

“The celluloid equivalent of a gallon of espresso.”
–The Guardian

“Its dreamy unfolding of so many moods and genres becomes intoxicating.”
–New York Magazine

Oct. 23, 24, 28 | Stephen Chow’s ludicrously energetic action comedy masterpiece is full of diabolical martial-arts in-jokes, Looney Tunes pacing, and more successful gags than any other movie this century. You need the big screen to keep up with them all.

THE SNAKE GIRL AND THE SILVER-HAIRED WITCH

Directed by Noriaki Yuasa | Japan
1966, 1h 22min, DCP, In Japanese with English Subtitles

“A truly wild spook show of a movie that almost feels proto-De Palma at times.”
— Mondo Digital

Oct. 27, 31 | Unlike the previous films in this series, which operate in a high-cultural plane, this one is based on a popular Young Adult manga series by Kazuo Umezu (The Drifting Classroom). A teenager who has grown up in a boarding school returns to her bizarre family home, with a father who is absorbed in his bizarre experiments and a (ghost?) sister. Dreamlike, gothic, and a little silly — just like you.