Special Events and Series

We’re Moving!

Our lease was not renewed in 2025 and we have moved out of 1403 NE 50th. Plans are underway to relocate the cinema and we need your help to build an even grander Grand Illusion! For any questions about our pop-up showings below, please contact us rather than the screening venues.

Coming Soon

All That’s Left of You

Cherien Dabis · 2025
146min · DCP
  • Saturday, Jan 17, 2026, 10:30am
  • Sunday, Jan 18, 2026, 10:30am

Screening location: SIFF Film Center – 167 Republican St, Seattle (located within the Seattle Center, just north of Climate Pledge Arena / east of KEXP and The Vera Project)

Shortlisted for the Academy Award for International Feature Film.

A deeply moving, multigenerational drama, ALL THAT’S LEFT OF YOU follows a Palestinian teenager who gets swept into a protest in the Occupied West Bank and experiences a moment of violence that rocks his family. The film unfolds as his mother recounts the political and emotional threads that led to that fateful moment. Spanning seven decades, the film traces the hopes and heartaches of one uprooted family, bearing witness to the scars of dispossession and the enduring legacy of survival. Jordan's Official Selection for the 98th Academy Awards.

In Arabic with English subtitles.

“…nuanced and moving … [director] Dabis has made her most confident and powerful work to date.” Brian Tellerico, RogerEbert.com

“…[a] necessary watch that confronts the way cruelty and repression leaves deep, lasting wounds over lifetimes.” Chase Hutchinson, TheWrap

Hard Boiled – New 4K Restoration

John Woo · 1992
126min · 4K DCP
  • Monday, Jan 26, 2026, 7:00pm

Screening location: Northwest Film Forum – 1515 12th Ave, Seattle

John Woo's long-unavailable action masterpiece, newly restored!

Chow Yun-Fat stars as a cop who loses his partner in a shoot-out with gun smugglers and goes on a mission to catch them. In order to get closer to the leaders of the ring, he joins forces with an undercover agent (Tony Leung) who's working as a gangster hitman. More than a cops-and-bad-guys story, HARD BOILED continually startles with its originality and dark humor.

In Cantonese with English subtitles.

“Woo has elevated the action movie into the realm of art. Infinitely more exciting than a dozen Die Hards, action cinema doesn’t come any better than this.” Mark Salisbury, Empire Magazine

“It’s nirvana for seekers of action, and it rarely gets any better than this.” Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle

Room Temperature

Zac Farley, Dennis Cooper · 2025
92min · DCP
  • Wednesday, Jan 28, 2026, 7:30pm

Screening location: SIFF Film Center – 167 Republican St, Seattle (located within the Seattle Center, just north of Climate Pledge Arena / east of KEXP and The Vera Project)

The new film from legendary underground novelist Dennis Cooper and visual artist Zac Farley. Named one of the ten best movies of 2025 by John Waters.

Set against the barren sprawl of the California desert, ROOM TEMPERATURE follows a family’s annual tradition of transforming their home into a DIY haunted house—an increasingly unhinged ritual now hijacked by the father’s obsessive vision. Hilarious, uncomfortable, and deeply strange, this is haunted-house cinema as poetic autopsy—a slow, disquieting meditation on control, longing, and the fantasies we force onto others.

“Cooper and Farley have an eye for images that creep one out, even if they don’t contain anything sinister in them necessarily.” Steve Erickson, Screen Slate

“Just when you begin hating this film, you’ll suddenly realize—huh? I love it. It’s weird, creepy, and maybe … just maybe, great.” John Waters

The Chronology of Water

Kristen Stewart · 2025
127min · DCP
  • Friday, Jan 30, 2026, 7:00pm
  • Sunday, Feb 1, 2026, 7:00pm

Screening location: SIFF Film Center – 167 Republican St, Seattle (located within the Seattle Center, just north of Climate Pledge Arena / east of KEXP and The Vera Project)

Kristen Stewart's feature-length directorial debut, shot in glorious 16mm.

Based on the beloved memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch, THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER is a raw and unflinching portrait of survival, sexuality, and self-invention. The film traces Lidia’s life from her earliest memories in the Pacific Northwest, as a promising swimmer, through fractured relationships, near-motherhood, addiction, and encounters with artistic heroes. Told as a fluid memory wash, the story transforms trauma into art, embodying Yuknavitch’s defiant voice that made her work a modern cult classic. It is not only a chronicle of a woman becoming a writer, but a visceral journey through the wreckage and resilience of a life lived against the grain.

“Kristen Stewart reveals a deft directorial hand and a distinct, languid, echoing style in her vividly made, emotionally visceral exploration of the life and times of American novelist Lidia Yuknavitch.” Christina Newland, Time Out

4/4 stars! “In partnership with Imogen Poots, who gives an astonishing performance as Lidia, Stewart boldly evokes the source material. There’s a collage aspect to the image placement, but Stewart is not afraid to be direct. This project has been years in the making. Stewart adapted the material, and you can feel her love for it.” Sheila O’Malley, RogerEbert.com

OBEX

Albert Birney · 2026
91min
  • Sunday, Feb 1, 2026, 4:30pm

Screening location: SIFF Film Center – 167 Republican St, Seattle (located within the Seattle Center, just north of Climate Pledge Arena / east of KEXP and The Vera Project)

The new movie from Albert Birney, co-writer and director of STRAWBERRY MANSION, OBEX is an audacious, uncanny, and delightfully skewed lo-fi fantasy. Shot in striking black and white, this surreally nostalgic nightmare revisits the dawn of personal computing to reflect on the loneliness of our always-online present day.

In pre-internet 1987, Conor and his dog Sandy live a life of seclusion, lost in the slow-rendering graphics of early Macs and televisions aglow with late-night horror movie marathons. But when he begins playing OBEX, a new and mysterious, state-of-the-art computer game, he finds himself trapped in a low-tech, but high-stakes analog hellscape as the line between reality and game blurs.

“A warm yearn for simpler times, told by a distinctive cinematic voice.” Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire

“OBEX is the kind of powerfully subconscious film that works on you after you’ve finished watching it, flooding back to your mind when you hear cicadas, while you stare at a blank television or if you’re simply standing in line at the grocery store.” Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com