90 minutes
Metro Surge is over, but the siege of Minneapolis by ICE left scars. Where do we go from here. Independent journalist Nick Valencia has traveled the country the last year reporting on-the-ground and in the trenches. He hosts his show live in conversation with those who were on the frontline of the fight in Minneapolis and beyond. Join us for a night of conversation and community as we meet the moment together.
Proudly presented by Universal Pictures
172 minutes
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is a mythic action epic based on Homer’s foundational saga and starring Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson and Lupita Nyong’o, with Zendaya and Charlize Theron.
Relased 2026
Rated R
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Proudly presented by Crosswalk
141 minutes
The live theater capture of the hit musical Hadestown, which won eight Tony Awards in 2019 including Best Musical and the 2020 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, featuring the five original principals of the Broadway company. The genre-defying new musical blends modern American folk music with New Orleans-inspired jazz to reimagine a sweeping ancient tale. Following two intertwining love stories — that of young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and that of King Hades and his wife Persephon —Hadestown invites audiences on a hell-raising journey to the underworld and back.
Directed by Brett Sullivan
137 minutes
Saturday, June 13 at 11:00 AM
Presenting Steven Spielberg’s definitive director’s cut of his sci-fi blockbuster, digitally remastered in 2024.
Cinema Club screenings are FREE for MSP Film Society Members. Not a Member? Join here. More info on Cinema Club here.
Members: Remember to sign-in to make your free reservation.
See Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day at The Main Cinema starting June 11.
Richard Dreyfuss stars as cable worker Roy Neary, who along with several other stunned bystanders experience a close encounter of the first kind – witnessing UFOs soaring across the sky. After this life-changing event, the inexplicable vision of a strange, mountain-like formation haunts him. He becomes obsessed with discovering what it represents, much to the dismay of his wife and family. Meanwhile, bizarre occurrences are happening around the world. Government agents have close encounters of the second kind – discovering physical evidence of extraterrestrial visitors in the form of a lost fighter aircraft from World War II and a stranded military ship that disappeared decades earlier only to suddenly reappear in unusual places. Roy continues to chase his vision to a remote area where he and the agents follow the clues that have drawn them to reach a site where they will have a close encounter of the third kind – contact.
Julie and Charlie Zelle
Frances and Frank Wilkinson
Leni and David Moore
Relased 1977
Rated PG
Directed by Steven Spielberg
118 minutes
Presented by Mizna
The Beirut Trilogy comprises three landmark works of Lebanese cinema by photo-journalist and documentarian Jocelyne Saab. Trained as a radio and television journalist, Saab turned her attention to documentary films at the start of the Lebanese Civil War. Saab’s commitment to and intimate interactions with the displaced, the exiled, and the dispossessed, mark her films and her quest to capture Beirut as uniquely her own.
Programmed by Mizna. Screening in collaboration with the MSP Film’s program Lumières Françaises. A Several Futures release.
*This screening is also a fundraiser for mutual aid on the ground in Lebanon.*
Direct donations will be encouraged during the event to benefit the Ghassan Abu Sitta Children’s fund, dedicated to providing medical attention to children who need it the most and helping to relieve the medical sector in Palestine and Lebanon.
Beirut, Never Again (1976, DCP, 35 min, French w/ English Subtitles) dir Jocelyne Saab
Every morning, when the nightly battles between militias have ceased, Jocelyne Saab roams around Beirut’s city center filming traces of daily life. Gunfire and song mix with a poetic voiceover written by the Lebanese writer and painter Etel Adnan. The city of Beirut has become a place where everyone, even children, have become soldiers, looters, and scavengers. Yet life persists.
Letter from Beirut (1978, DCP, 52 min, French w/ English Subtitles) dir Jocelyne Saab
Three years after the beginning of the Civil War, the filmmaker returns to her city for several months. Living between Lebanon and France, she tries to readapt to daily life in Beirut. Saab wanders the streets of the irrevocably changed city, rides buses, chats with refugees and peacekeepers, and reflects on the war’s toll during a brief moment of peace.
Beirut, My City (1983, DCP, 38 min, French w/ English Subtitles) dir Jocelyne Saab
Considered by Saab to be her most important film, Beirut My City returns Saab and her collaborator, the playwright and director Roger Assaf, to the shell of her 150-year-old childhood home following Israel’s July 1982 invasion. She films the aftermath of the Israeli siege, even capturing the intimate farewells as members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization withdraw from Beirut. The sound of Israeli jets are constant, yet Saab finds glimmers of hope and solidarity amidst the chaos.
In 2026, Mizna celebrates the twentieth edition of our flagship program, the Twin Cities Arab Film Festival. We mark this milestone with a year-long, multi-venue program, Looking Forward, Looking Back, which centers images from the history of SWANA filmmaking and our past festivals. Through this framework, we confront the visual record, demanding more from the archive than a sentimental look at the past. While SWANA films have been continually plundered, twisted, and aligned to colonial narratives, this year, Mizna’s film programming considers what overlooked, liberatory lessons the past might offer the present and future. With this goal in mind, we present selections by former Mizna festival curators alongside new restorations of SWANA cinema, drawing radical new meanings from the objects that remain.
Directed by Jocelyne Saab
102 minutes
Presented by Mizna
Jocelyne Saab’s narrative feature, set amid the Lebanese Civil War, tells the story of a passionate teenager who forms a (mostly) platonic bond with an older abstract painter.
As a filmmaker known primarily for her documentary work, Jocelyne Saab’s The Razor’s Edge is one of her few narrative features. The film tells the story of platonic love between a young refugee from southern Lebanon and a painter depressed by the ongoing Lebanese Civil War. Through its story and characters, the film traverses spaces that have now disappeared, taking viewers into corners of Beirut not often shown in films made during the conflict. Presented in a new 4K restoration, The Razor’s Edge merges narrative structure with astute documentary precision to display the social impacts of violence on Lebanon during the war.
*This screening is also a fundraiser for mutual aid on the ground in Lebanon.*
Direct donations will be encouraged during the event to benefit the Ghassan Abu Sitta Children’s fund, dedicated to providing medical attention to children who need it the most and helping to relieve the medical sector in Palestine and Lebanon.
A Several Futures release. Presented in partnership with Several Futures and Metrograph. Additional screenings are being held in other cities–stay tuned for more info.
In 2026, Mizna celebrates the twentieth edition of our flagship program, the Twin Cities Arab Film Festival. We mark this milestone with a year-long, multi-venue program, Looking Forward, Looking Back, which centers images from the history of SWANA filmmaking and our past festivals. Through this framework, we confront the visual record, demanding more from the archive than a sentimental look at the past. While SWANA films have been continually plundered, twisted, and aligned to colonial narratives, this year, Mizna’s film programming considers what overlooked, liberatory lessons the past might offer the present and future. With this goal in mind, we present selections by former Mizna festival curators alongside new restorations of SWANA cinema, drawing radical new meanings from the objects that remain.
Relased 1985
Directed by Jocelyne Saab
75 minutes
The Main Cinema • 115 SE Main Street • Minneapolis
Special screening event with Canadian-Ugandan filmmaker Ian Mark Kimanje in attendance.
Co-presented by the Ghanaian Association of Minnesota (GhanAM), Ugandan Association of Minnesota, West African Collaborative (WAC), and the Sierra Leone Community in Minnesota (SLCM)
Caribbean Carnival is not just celebration. It is liberation, a voice of freedom, and a cultural movement born from defiance, transformed into a global street parade of color, memory, music, and joy.
Carnival: They Can’t Steal Our Joy follows Canadian-Ugandan filmmaker Ian Mark Kimanje as he explores why Caribbean Carnival continues to carry such deep emotional, cultural, and historical meaning across generations of African and Caribbean diasporic communities. Filmed across five countries, the documentary reveals Carnival as a living expression of resistance, survival, migration, creativity, and collective joy. Through intimate personal stories, historical reflection, and vibrant access to Carnival communities, the film reframes Carnival as more than spectacle: it is a cultural force rooted in memory, freedom, and the refusal to surrender joy.
Member – $10 (no online fee – sign in to access Member rate)
General – $15 (+$2 online fee / no fee at box office)
Student – $12 (box office only)
Relased 2025
Directed by Ian Mark Kimanje
Proudly presented by Paramount
115 minutes
Emmet Kowler of Sloppy Discs in conversation with sculpture artist Emily Mulvaney.
The bizarre death of a teenage girl leads journalist Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) to investigate a mysterious urban legend. Within the cabin is a videocassette containing disturbing imagery, and anyone who views the tape receives a chilling phone call from an unknown voice stating “seven days.” Gore Verbinski directs this adaptation of Koji Suzuki’s 1991 Japanese horror novel, Ring.
Relased 2002
Rated PG-13
Directed by Gore Verbinski
Proudly presented by Neon
122 minutes
Emmet Kowler of Sloppy Discs in conversation with actor Maggie Cramer.
Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is hired to paint the wedding portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). As the women orbit each other, intimacy and attraction grow as they share Héloïse’s first moments of freedom. Winner of Best Screenplay & Queer Palm at 2019 Cannes and one of the best reviewed films that year, Portrait of a Lady on Fire solidified Céline Sciamma as one of the most exciting filmmakers working in the world today.
Relased 2019
Rated R
Directed by Céline Sciamma
Proudly presented by Paramount
104 minutes
Emmet Kowler of Sloppy Discs in conversation with filmmaker and MSPIFF alumn Mack Hastings.
A week in the life of a young folk singer (Oscar Isaac) as he navigates the Greenwich Village folk scene of 1961. Guitar in tow, huddled against the unforgiving New York winter, he struggles to make it as a musician against seemingly insurmountable obstacles—some of them of his own making. From Writers/Directors Ethan & Joel Coen
Relased 2013
Rated R
Directed by Ethan Coen, Joel Coen