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.

MAGELLAN

Directed by Lav Diaz | Portugal
2025, 2h 44min, DCP, In multiple languages with English subtitles.

“Stunningly mounted, politically rigorous … confronts any viewers hoping for a sweeping biographical romp with a frank post-colonial perspective.”
—Variety

Mar. 19, 21, 27, 28, 29 | Lav Diaz’s panoramic telling of the conquests of Portuguese circumnavigator and conqueror Ferdinand Magellan stars Gael García Bernal as the title figure in an acclaimed, multifaceted performance. Taking visual inspiration from Renaissance paintings, it is also a visual spectacle.

KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki | Japan
1989, 1h 42min, DCP, In English and Japanese with English subtitles

Shows that begin before 6 PM are dubbed. Shows that begin at 6 PM or later are subtitled.

From the legendary Studio Ghibli, creators of Spirited Away and Ponyo, and Academy Award-winning director Hayao Miyazaki, comes the beloved coming-of-age story of a resourceful young witch who uses her broom to create a delivery service, only to lose her gift of flight in a moment of self-doubt.

Mar. 23-31, Apr. 2 | The hand-drawn, animated feature, based on the novel by Eiko Kadono, is produced, written, and directed by Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, and features a musical score from Miyazaki’s long-time collaborator, the renowned composer Joe Hisaishi.

The new 4K remaster highlights the great thought and care put into every frame of the film, celebrating the authentic craftsmanship of Studio Ghibli’s detailed artwork.

A NEW LOVE IN TOKYO

Directed by Banmei Takahashi | Japan
1994, 1h 53min, DCP, In Japanese with English subtitles.

“… Refreshingly free of moral panic and stigma around sex work, or sexuality in general.”
— Screen Slate

“While honesty dictates that this movie be classified first and foremost as erotica, it is erotica that finds room for real sweetness and intellectual pretensions along with its kink.”
—The New York Times

Mar. 20, 21 | Set in ’90s Tokyo, this kinky follow-up to TOKYO DECADENCE follows Rei, a theater-loving S&M worker, and Ayumi, a call girl cohabiting with her boyfriend. Candid and cheeky, it reflects the ever-evolving perspectives on sex, love, and freedom of a new generation of women. Featuring photographs by Nobuyoshi Araki, who also contributed to the screenplay. New restoration.

Hausu

Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi | Japan
1977, 1h 31min, DCP, In Japanese with English subtitles.

“MUST-SEE-NOW – delirious, deranged, gonzo or just gone, baby, gone — no single adjective or even a pileup does justice to HAUSU.”
—The New York Times

“Shot with so much visual panache and mid-70s excess that it comes off like RINGU on a Pixy Stix-fueled hug-a-thon … a brain-rattling delight.”
—The Austin Chronicle

Apr. 3, 4, 5, 8 | From Nobuhiko Obayashi (HIS MOTORBIKE, HER ISLAND), spotlighted in last year’s Kadokawa Superstar program, comes an avant-garde teen-appeal ghost story that employs nearly every film technique possible in a phantasmagoria of ghostly psychedelia. Guaranteed to thrill and delight even the most jaded filmgoer. 

XIAO WU

Adrift On The Other Side Of The World: Early Films By Jia Zhangke

Directed by Jia Zhangke | Hong Kong/China
1997, 1h 48min, DCP, In Mandarin and Jin Chinese with English subtitles.

“Jia Zhangke — in his first feature film — displays an incisive mastery of political symbolism. Jia’s estranged yet fierce x‑ray of the ills of modern China evokes a calm, intimate compassion for its struggling survivors.”
—The New Yorker

Apr. 7, 11 | A 16mm production featuring nonprofessional actors shot without state approval, Jia Zhangke’s breakout follows a disillusioned pickpocket who finds himself empty‑handed in the new market economy. But as a romance blossoms between him and a sex worker, he begins to wonder: does love hold more value than money?

UNKNOWN PLEASURES

Adrift On The Other Side Of The World: Early Films By Jia Zhangke

Directed by Jia Zhangke | China/Japan/France/South Korea
2002, 1h 53min, DCP, In Mandarin and Jin Chinese with English subtitles.

“Richly metaphorical yet bracingly naturalistic, UNKNOWN PLEASURES has the immediacy of an early edition headline.”
—Reverse Shot

“This is a mysterious and elusive movie which gestures at the emptiness in the lives of the dispossessed young in China, and everywhere else. But its strains of eroticism and black humour echo and eddy in the mind long after the closing credits.”
—The Guardian

Apr. 14, 18 | Friends and street kids Bin Bin (Zhao Weiwei) and Xiao Ji (Wu Qiong), members of the “birth control generation,” idolize Quentin Tarantino and find escape in karaoke bars, clinging to their dreams until a chance encounter with Qiao Qiao (Zhao Tao) and her thug boyfriend shatters their routine and sends them into the unknown. A look at a new China, shot entirely on digital video.

CARNIVAL IN THE NIGHT

Directed by Masashi Yamamoto | Japan
1981, 1h 49min, DCP, In Japanese with English subtitles.

“These are Yamamoto’s politics: to squat, to squander, and to soil reality. Whether anyone takes notice is beyond him; his unceasing state of resistance exists beyond society and blooms by virtue of its separation from its norms.”
—Screen Slate

Apr. 17, 18 | Motherhood has never been so punk. Masashi Yamamoto’s gritty 16mm jishu‑eiga sees single mother Kumi (Kumiko Ohta) hand her kid over to her ex and descend into a dark underground of squatters, hustlers, and explosives hobbyists for one last hurrah. A cry from the gutter from the director of ROBINSON’S GARDEN and WHAT’S UP CONNECTION in a new 2K restoration.

THE WORLD

Adrift On The Other Side Of The World: Early Films By Jia Zhangke

Directed by Jia Zhangke | China/Japan/France
2004, 2h 23min, DCP, In Mandarin and Jin Chinese with English subtitles.

“Suggesting at different moments a backstage musical, a failed love story, a surreal comedy, and even a cartoon fantasy, this beautiful, corrosive, visionary masterpiece by Jia Zhangke is a frighteningly persuasive account of the current state of the planet.”
—The Chicago Reader

Apr. 21, 25 | Just outside of Beijing lies The World, a surreal theme park featuring wondrous replicas of iconic monuments, where tourists roam, and a dancer (Zhao Tao) and a security guard (Cheng Taishen) tessellate in a riveting simulation of modern globalization.

STILL LIFE

Adrift On The Other Side Of The World: Early Films By Jia Zhangke

Directed by Jia Zhangke | Hong Kong/China
2006, 1h 48min, 35mm, In Mandarin, Sichuanese, and Jin Chinese with English subtitles.

Screening in 35mm on April 28. Encore screenings will be DCP. 

Apr. 28, May 2 | A miner and a nurse arrive in Fengjie, a town upended by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, to search for long‑lost spouses. As the old neighborhood disappears and a new one rises in its place, both must decide what to reclaim from their pasts and what to leave behind.