Limited Engagements & Special Screenings

Ongoing

Recent releases, restored classics, and special guests grace the Barbro Osher Theater.

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  • Chess of the Wind

  • Nightmare Alley

  • Hive

  • My Grandmother

  • Faya dayi

  • Fauna

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • Nightmare Alley

    • Sunday, October 31 5 PM
    • Sunday, November 7 7 PM
    • Saturday, November 27 7 PM
    Edmund Goulding
    United States, 1947

    Digital Restoration

    “Wildly unpredictable circus and penthouse noir with gorgeous scumbag Tyrone Power, at the height of his doomed charms. . . . After viewing this picaresque and cathartic film, you will never again misuse the word ‘geek’” (Guy Maddin).

  • Chess of the Wind

    • Thursday, November 4 7 PM
    • Sunday, November 21 7 PM
    Mohammad Reza Aslani
    Iran, 1976

    Bay Area Premiere!

    A scheming aristocratic family battles for a dead mother’s riches in this gothic 1976 Iranian blend of Visconti, Persian art miniatures, Vermeer, and Edgar Allan Poe—long thought lost, now gorgeously restored.

  • Hive

    • Saturday, November 6 5 PM
    • Saturday, November 20 5 PM
    Blerta Basholli
    Kosovo, Switzerland, Macedonia, Albania, 2021

    Bay Area Premiere!

    An iron-willed widow in Kosovo fights to provide for herself and her family in this formidable tale of female empowerment and resilience, the first film to sweep Sundance’s narrative Grand Jury Prize, Audience Award, and Director Award.

  • CineSpin: My Grandmother

    • Friday, November 12 7 PM
    Kote Mikaberidze
    USSR, 1929

    BAMPFA Collection
    Free Admission!

    Join the BAMPFA Student Committee for our exciting annual film and live music event. Berkeley-based jazz duo Gabe and Miles perform a live, original score for My Grandmother, Kote Mikaberidze’s riotous, scathingly antibureaucratic satire.

    Live Music from Gabe and Miles

  • Faya dayi

    • Friday, October 22 7 PM
    • Sunday, October 24 7 PM
    Jessica Beshir
    Ethiopia, United States, Qatar, 2021

    “A nonfiction work of sensory immersion that’s part anthropology, part poetry” (Hollywood Reporter), the stunning Faya dayi explores the khat trade that dominates rural Ethiopia, circling between youths with little hope and their elders, who are dependent on the leaf’s dream state.

  • Fauna

    • Thursday, October 21 7 PM
    • Saturday, October 23 7 PM
    Nicolás Pereda
    Mexico, Canada, 2020

    An actor’s ambivalence toward participating in Narcos: Mexico helped shape Nicolás Pereda’s newest work, which channels his familiar concerns—the rhythms, conversations, and silences of Mexico—into an off-kilter, metafictional investigation of storytelling and performance.

    Nicolás Pereda in Person