The Grand Illusion

Irene Kelly (Michaela McManus) travels through parallel universes, repeatedly killing her daughter's murderer. As she becomes consumed by vengeance, her humanity hangs in the balance.

Written and directed by brothers Kevin and Matthew McManus and starring their sister Michaela, REDUX REDUX is a captivating sci-fi thriller that bleeds indie spirit and ingenuity.

“Slickly directed and cleverly told, Redux Redux makes for a dread-soaked and pleasantly unpredictable surprise of an indie sci-fi thriller.” Meagan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting

“…takes elements of the serial killer genre, aspects of grief drama, and a splash of multiverse storytelling and mixes them into something that feels fresh and new… It’s smart, terrifying, and the best indie genre film I saw at SXSW this year.” Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com

FINAL SHOWING March 18th at SIFF Uptown (venue changed from SIFF Film Center due to popular demand). Author Lidia Yuknavitch scheduled to join for an in-person introduction and Q&A!

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

This feature-length “mixtape” unearths and reintroduces a stunning, singular body of work by the enigmatic Kati Kelli, an outsider video artist and digital native whose subversive online uploads push at the seams of the digital form. Curated by Jane Schoenbrun (writer/director of WE'RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD'S FAIR and I SAW THE TV GLOW) and Kati's widower, Jordan Wippell.

For nearly a decade before her passing in 2019, Kati ran “Girl Internet Show,” a YouTube channel, parasocial experiment, and epically deranged one-woman universe built from scratch in her bedroom. This presentation features a lovingly curated selection of Kati’s online work, unreleased videos, and her first (and final) short film opus, "Total Body Removal Surgery".

“…a surreal, fun, and disorienting 79 minutes.” Siddhant Adlakha, Mashable

“…some of this decade’s funniest, most cutting, and truly most bizarre works of art.” GQ Magazine

“…one of the strangest, funniest, and [most] heartbreaking viewing experiences I have ever had… practically perfect in every way.” Tori Potenza, Movie Jawn

25th anniversary of Steven Spielberg's monumental production of Stanley Kubrick's unrealized science fiction dream project; a bold, humanistic vision that pays tribute to Kubrick’s aesthetic while also remaining a quintessential Spielberg film.

This high-tech Pinocchio story—about a robot child (Haley Joel Osment) on a quest to become a real boy after being abandoned by his adopted parents—is one of Spielberg’s most challenging and visually astonishing films, featuring one unforgettable sight after another, and an ending that will forever lodge in your memory drive.

“Deeply thoughtful and thoroughly fascinating.” Todd McCarthy, Variety

“One of the most poetic and haunting allegories about the cinema that I can think of… It’s also the most philosophical film in Kubrick’s canon, the most intelligent in Spielberg’s.” Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

Twenty-fifth encore screening! The Beavers are bringing the March Madness!

Our friends at Central Cinema are generously helping us keep the beavers gnawing away while we search for a new home. 60% of ticket sales go to our relocation fund! This month marks two years since we first unleashed the Beavers on Seattle!

In this 19th century, supernatural winter epic, a drunken applejack salesman must go from zero to hero and become North America’s greatest fur trapper by defeating hundreds of beavers.

“Starts strange, gets stranger, and yet remains resolutely adorable… embraces the defiant glee of art cinema and distills it into something so thoroughly pure and sincere that it is surely hard not to fall in love with it.” Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Alliance of Women Film Journalists

“It’s sure to develop a significant cult following with its unique mix of silent-era slapstick, animation elements, theme-park-style critter costumes, and general air of inspired absurdity.” Dennis Harvey, Variety

“Steroidally swollen with gags and smarts.” Guy Maddin

In honor of the Grand Illusion's 22nd anniversary as a volunteer-operated non-profit, we're screening a movie that is very much our bag: the wonderfully weird cult classic, KIN-DZA-DZA!, beautifully restored by Mosfilm and distributed by the fine folks at Deaf Crocodile. Imagine Andrei Tarkovsky circa SOLARIS directing Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and you’ll come close to the existential strangeness of this delightfully loopy Soviet-era sci-fi comedy, this year celebrating its 40th anniversary.

Two average Muscovites – a plainspoken construction foreman (Stanislav Lyubshin) and a Georgian violin student (Levan Gabriadze) – encounter an odd man on the street who asks, “Tell me the number of your planet in the Tentura?” In a flash, they’re teleported across the universe to the planet Pluke in the Kin–Dza–Dza galaxy – a Tatooine-like desert world whose inhabitants are hilariously noncommunicative (their main words are “ku” for good and “kyu” for very bad) and where common wooden matches are tremendously valuable.

A deadpan, absurdist mixture of Kurt Vonnegut, Monty Python, Samuel Beckett, and Jodorowsky’s never-made DUNE, where alien cultures are even more haphazard and WTF than our own; the film is also a savage satire of bureaucratic idiocy and dysfunction no matter what political system you’re living under – or what planet you’re living on.

In Russian with English subtitles.

“…possibly the most underrated science fiction film of the past 50 years.” Joel Blackledge, Little White Lies

“Bittersweet satire posing as postapocalyptic science fiction, Georgiy Daneliya’s Kin-dza-dza! has as much to say about today as it does the last gasps of the Soviet Union.” Budd Wilkins, Slant

The long-awaited animated feature from sketch comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U' Know.

A zany crew of misfits blasts off to Mars, only to find they've been duped by a scheming billionaire. Chaos ensues as they face bizarre challenges and unexpected surprises on their wacky interplanetary journey. Featuring the voices of Sam Brown, Darren Trumeter, Timmy Williams, Zach Cregger (writer/director of BARBARIAN and WEAPONS), and the late Trevor Moore. Written by Cregger, Brown, and Moore.

“The pacing, stakes, and dialogue, despite all of them being coated in absolute absurdity, stand on their own and delivers one of the best full-length comedic feature scripts, animated or otherwise, that I’ve seen in a very long time.” Liz Wiest, Movie Jawn

Shot on vibrant 35mm with striking 16mm sequences and directed by Julie Pacino in her feature debut, I LIVE HERE NOW is a haunting, dreamlike psychodrama about identity, trauma, and the fragile line between memory and madness.

Struggling actress Rose (Lucy Fry) finds her life upended by unexpected news and is suddenly forced to confront a future she never thought possible, just as a major career opportunity with a top agent comes into view. Things spiral further when her casual boyfriend brings his overbearing mother (Sheryl Lee) into the fold, pushing Rose to the brink.

She flees to The Crown Inn, a crumbling motel at the edge of nowhere, where time fractures and reality bends. Haunted by sleep paralysis, splintered memories, and eerie motel dwellers (including the enigmatic Lillian, played by Madeline Brewer), Rose begins to unravel. To move forward, she must confront the buried truth of her past that her body has never forgotten.

“A surreal descent into hysteria makes way for a story so inherently feminine that it could birth an army. I Live Here Now might look lavishly pretty, but it houses a powerful message that warrants screaming from the rooftops.” Kat Hughes, THN

“…one of the most self-assured first features I’ve seen in recent memory… a film so specific yet so universal, a tale you can feel resonate in your bone marrow, shaking awake the darkest parts of yourself you’ve kept buried for years… Pacino bears her soul here and you can feel it pulsating in every gorgeous frame. If this is Pacino just getting started, I cannot wait to see what’s next.” Mary Beth McAndrews, Dread Central

John Woo's jaw-dropping bullet ballet classic, newly restored!

When an expert assassin (Chow Yun-Fat) accidentally blinds a nightclub singer (Sally Yeh), he chooses to retire after one last job to pay for his unintended victim's sight-restoring operation. But when he's double-crossed, he reluctantly joins forces with a rogue policeman (Danny Lee) to make things right.

In Cantonese with English subtitles.

Special live intro from local Hong Kong genre film connoisseur and one of the programmers of the Seattle Film Society, Patrick McFarland.

“It starts over the top then blasts through the roof. It takes your breath away!” J. Hoberman, Village Voice

“…The Killer is John Woo at his pinnacle.” Mark Dinning, Empire

A long-lost oddity of underground cinema and a notorious fixture in outsider film lore, SCARLET WARNING 666 was lovingly restored after decades of obscurity and is celebrated (and derided) as a bewildering example of independent psychedelia and eccentric ambition.

SCARLET WARNING 666 stars cult auteur Palmer Rockey in multiple roles — including twin brothers trapped in an unfathomable tale of Satanic skullduggery, bizarre occult rituals, and “demonic assassination” on a country estate. The film’s narrative logic dissolves into a collage of ritual scenes, disjointed character arcs, and surreal confrontations with the infernal, as the characters grapple with forces they barely comprehend in an increasingly chaotic rural nightmare. Palmer Rockey's vanity project defies conventional storytelling and embraces its own idiosyncratic creation mythology — alternately dismissed as “the worst movie ever made” and cherished as a cult curio.

Grindhouse Releasing has painstakingly restored SCARLET WARNING 666 from the original camera negative, going beyond the limits of sanity to preserve every agonizing frame of Palmer Rockey’s cinematic tribulation.

Select audience reactions/reviews from the January 2026 world premiere of the new restoration at the Texas Theatre in Dallas:

“A movie for those who always wondered what Ben from Blue Velvet got up to in his spare time. The work of a genuinely unwell mind, possibly the ultimate Dallas-shot trashterpiece. Soundtrack unironically slaps.”

“Kinda like if Neil Breen made A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin. The psychosis oozes off the screen at every moment.”

“The product of a demented, disjointed psyche… This is TRULY one for the sickos. A masochist’s delight.”