Starring: Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaoui

When a young Arab is arrested and beaten unconscious by police, a riot erupts in the notoriously violent suburbs outside of Paris. Three of the victim’s peers, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Said (Saïd Taghmaoui) and Hubert (Hubert Koundé), wander aimlessly about their home turf in the aftermath of the violence as they try to come to grips with their outrage over the brutal incident. After one of the men finds a police officer’s discarded weapon, their night seems poised to take a bleak turn.

Starring: Rodney El Haddad, Nadine Labaki, Nada Abou Farhat, Liliane Nemri, Omar Rajeh, Mounir Malaeb

To make an additional $10 donation to Make the Road New York, select the “Event + Donation” ticket on the checkout screen.

Bosta is a road musical that takes the audience on a wonderful journey across various Lebanese regions… a journey accompanied by a groundbreaking soundtrack and, of course, this truly pioneering dance, the electro-dabkeh.

Starring: Kristie Etzhold, Joycelyne Lew, Matthew Borlengi, Gary Levinson, Marya Grant, Michael Liberty

In the seedy underbelly of L.A., a coven of bloodthirsty prostitutes lures horny johns to their doom—stripping flesh and draining blood in a ritual of sex and satanic sacrifice. When a pair of college girls are seduced into the sisterhood, the streets run red with guts and gonads in this zero-budget blast of brain-rotting SOV madness.

Cannibal Hookers is a raw, blood-soaked slab of Los Angeles back-alley horror that wallows in the sleaze and DIY drone of that city’s late 1980s landscape and attitude. Director Donald Farmer leans hard into this no-budget chaos, packing every frame with as much nudity, gore and gutter trash as he can squeeze into the viewfinder. And while the film creeps between its satanic rituals and grindhouse slaughter, it never once slows down for logic or restraint. This is pure VHS-era filth—cheap, trashy, and utterly deranged.

Starring: Harry Myles, Joe Browne, Nick Norman, George Tripos, Diana Byrne

Blasted to bits in the line of duty, narcotics agent Tom Wilde is reborn as a bulletproof cyborg and sent straight back on the job (sound familiar?). His mission: storm the drug-soaked jungles of the Golden Triangle and rescue an undercover agent from the grip of Mr. Young — a sadistic cartel boss who wields black magic and commands a horde of hopping vampires, thugs and other undead killers.

A collision of bargain-bin sci-fi, action, kung fu and supernatural sleaze, stitched together with zero regard for any continuity or logic. Often erroneously credited to director Godfrey Ho, Robo Vampire shamelessly rips off RoboCop and drops him into a world of hopping vampires, ghostly rituals, and endless explosions. The results are a gloriously incoherent brain glitch that plays like a 1980s greatest hits reel of bootleg VHS clips. Every scene feels like it was shot for a different movie, yet somehow, someway it all adds up to a truly astonishing and unforgettable experience.

Starring: Ghalia Lacroix, Amel Hedjili, Hend Sabri

Part of the Arab Women in the Arts Showcase. To make an additional $10 donation to Arab Film & Media Institute, select the “Event + Donation” ticket on the checkout screen.

Set in 1960s Tunisia as the country is emerging from the yoke of colonialism, this film focuses on Alia (Ghalia Lacroix), a singer who visits the palace where her mother, Khedija (Amel Hedhili), was once employed. The journey triggers unpleasant recollections about the way her mother was treated by male members of the privileged class. In a series of flashbacks, Alia looks back on her adolescent self (Hend Sabri) and begins to piece together key details about her murky family history.

Starring: Michael Esper, Kathryn Gallagher, Stephen Malkmus, Mark Ibold, Scott Kannberg, Bob Nastanovich, Steve West, Joe Keery, Jason Schwartzman, Tim Heidecker

An examination of the iconic 90s indie band, Pavements appears to be just another music documentary, until it doesn’t. A prismatic, narrative, scripted, documentary, musical, metatextual hybrid, the film intimately shows the band preparing for their sold-out 2022 reunion tour while simultaneously tracking the preparations for a musical based on their songs, a museum devoted to their history and a big-budget Hollywood biopic inspired by their saga as the most important band of a generation.

Starring: Lyndsey Craine, Lala Barlow, Vito Trigo, James Hamer-Morton, Charlie Bond, Emily Haigh, Michaela Longden

Vegan goth high school student Beth Conner’s life takes a turn for the bizarre when she finds her life mimicking a 90s cliche-laden horror film that only she can see. When she falls into a taboo relationship with her new English teacher Miss Campbell and soon develops a problematic taste for human flesh, Beth decides to end it all with the help of a loaded handgun… but where to find one?

Once the patriarchal school board of her high school auctions the rights to live stream the inaugural “All You Can Eat Massacre” contest, where the winner is awarded a loaded handgun, Beth finally finds a way to escape horror movies once and for all. But first, Beth must find a way to win the contest and save her high school.

Pre-screening event at Night Owl Video
Head over to Night Owl Video at 288 Grand St from 6-8pm for a meet and greet and signing with director Liam Regan and Lloyd Kaufman, president and co-founder of Troma Entertainment.

Starring: Betsey Brown, Jane Brown, Ron Brown, Chloe Cherry, Dasha Nekrasova

A new audacious film from Peter Vack that is destined to become a cult classic, this is transgressive cinema at its most provocative! File this one under “For sickos only.”

Rachel doesn’t realize she has grown up in captivity working for an advertising agency where her job is to assess Mommy 6.0, her favorite pop star in the whole entire world.

Starring: Cornel Wilde, Ken Gampu, Gert van den Bergh, Bella Randles, Morrison Gampu, Sandy Nkomo, Fusi Zazayokwe

The dog-days of August are upon us… Time to shed those warming layers – tear the sweat-soaked raiment of societal structuralism away – freed to take chase with The Deuce in hot hunt of… THE NAKED PREY!.. “Audience” and “film” finally fused –  stripped bare… surrendered… together sentient in a Sun-flooded fever of image! Sound! Movement! Emotion!.. STEAMY!!

With a minimum of “set-up”: obnoxious privilegeds on a paid-for South African safari stupidly disregard their guide’s guidance and get met with more than a mouthful of malice from those whose land they’re looting… leaving said guide the last man standing – or rather running – for his life… as The Naked Prey!!

Mid-latish career for the handsomely hunkish one-time swash-buckling “Matinee Idol” Wilde – here doing double-duty before and behind the camera… One of a handful of highly idiosyncratic, generally down-beat directorial efforts.. this for which he somewhat re-invents not only himself – here bearded haggard scraggly gaunt and sinewy – but also as well the idea of what a “mainstream” “Hollywood” “Action-Adventure” movie could be made up of: also haggard scraggly gaunt and sinewy (and bearded?? why not!)… Independent from explanations, contextualizations, judgmentals… base and basic… A crucible of brutal sensualism nearing the “experimental” in its lean meanness… Confident in its nearly dialogless universality and fervent digging toward a humanity-wide cry for compassion… with THE NAKED PREY, Wilde forges the basics of movie-making’s beginnings into a gut-stab mold-breaking modernism… A wonder to behold! Behold on tight with The Deuce!!

PREY‘s Paramount Pictures promoted the pic’s New Embassy Theatre premiere with a “nationwide beauty contest” –  the “winner” of which to be tiaraed that opening night: “Miss Naked Prey“!??! Preposterous?!!? Perfect!??! Prey-tell – which of you Deucies be brave enough to dare vie for such a title?? Because – believe or not… ’tis indeed… by night’s end – one of YOU (in actual theatrical attendance) will be crowned!!

Starring: Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak, Bette Davis, Warren William, Lyle Talbot, Humphrey Bogart

Called “distasteful” by New York Times critic Mourdant Hall, pre-Code workhorse Mervyn LeRoy’s Three on a Match ranks among the era’s most lascivious and uncompromising women’s pictures.

Grade school pals Mary, Vivian and Ruth’s personalities seemed to have already calcified on the playground, hinting at the shades of womanhood in their respective futures. Shameless flirt Mary (Joan Blondell) ripens into a happy-go-lucky showgirl. Brainy bookworm Ruth (Bette Davis) parlays her studiousness into a secure office job. But it is Vivian (Ann Dvorak), a snobbish beauty with a rich husband, whose life takes the most drastic turn. Reunited during a chance meeting, Vivian can only marvel at her companions’ independence and self-sufficiency. Bored with marriage and motherhood, she soon falls under the sway of a no-good gangster, sending her tumbling into a void of addiction and child neglect.