Monday, August 31 at 7pm
Emmet Kowler of Sloppy Discs in conversation with actor Maggie Cramer.
ABOUT THE FILM
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.
Twin Cities Geek art club meets every Thursday and Sunday evening from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. on the Twin Cities Geeks Discord. Hop on voice/video and chat while you create art, then share your finished pieces on the #art-club channel!
Feel free to invite anybody to participate. The discord invite link is https://twincitiesgeek.com/discord
Saturday, September 5 at 10:00 PM
Midnight Mayhem featuring your host Chaz Kangas
The team that brought you the horror masterpiece Re-Animator followed it up one year later with another H.P. Lovecraft-inspired body horror classic From Beyond. Starring Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton (who will both be coming to Minnesota for Crypticon in October) as well as fellow horror legend Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead), Stuart Gordon's sophomore splatter-fest starts with a pineal gland experiment and ends with wall-to-wall interdimensional mutants getting mutilated. Come celebrate 40 years of From Beyond - no splash zone required.
ABOUT THE FILM
A doctor invents a machine that stimulates a sensory gland in the brain that allows the user to view an extra dimension. Unfortunately, when he sees the monstrous inhabitants of this realm, they can see him too and are rather eager to introduce him to their world: one that goes beyond the flesh.
ABOUT MIDNIGHT MAYHEM
Midnight Mayhem features films that play the best after dark. Presented in the fun community experience that they were always meant to be, hosted by Chaz Kangas with special surprises, giveaways, and more throughout the night.
Sunday, September 6 at 4pm
Stick around after the film for a live video Q&A with director Penny Lane!
ABOUT THE FILM
A Eurasian Eagle-Owl named Flaco escapes from the Central Park Zoo and sets off on a magical odyssey through the island of Manhattan. Flaco overcomes his years of captivity and lack of survival skills to answer the call of the wild – and discovers he was wild inside all along.
September 9 at 7pm
Introducing Night School, MSP Film’s new monthly repertory series exploring film history and form. Local experts heighten our appreciation of cinema as an art form, social institution, and object of study. Class is in session the second Wednesday of every month – enroll today!
The Night School screening of The Great Dictator will feature a discussion of reception studies with Megan Feeney, PhD, author of Hollywood in Havana: US Cinema and Revolutionary Nationalism in Cuba before 1959.
Twin Cities Geek art club meets every Thursday and Sunday evening from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. on the Twin Cities Geeks Discord. Hop on voice/video and chat while you create art, then share your finished pieces on the #art-club channel!
Feel free to invite anybody to participate. The discord invite link is https://twincitiesgeek.com/discord
ABBASolutely Fab marks 10 years of spreading the joy of ABBA
Sep 11, 2026 6:00 pm - Sep 11, 20267:30 pm
Minnesota’s number 1 ABBA tribute band: featuring an all star lineup of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and British musicians mark its 10 year anniversary with a special show at Crooners.
Twin Cities Geek art club meets every Thursday and Sunday evening from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. on the Twin Cities Geeks Discord. Hop on voice/video and chat while you create art, then share your finished pieces on the #art-club channel!
Feel free to invite anybody to participate. The discord invite link is https://twincitiesgeek.com/discord
The Homes by Architects Tour is a self-guided, annual home tour that showcases an impressive spectrum of residential design from Minnesota’s talented architecture community.
The Homes by Architects Tour is a self-guided, annual home tour that showcases an impressive spectrum of residential design from Minnesota’s talented architecture community.
Monday, September 21 at 7pm + National Punctuation Day Thursday, September 24 at 4pm (with Open Captions)!
ABOUT THE FILM
A grammar guru takes her pop-up grammar advice stand on an epic road trip across all 50 states to show that comma fights can bring us closer together in a divided time.
One fall day, Ellen Jovin set up a folding table on a Manhattan sidewalk with a homemade sign that said “Grammar Table.” Right away, passersby began excitedly asking questions, telling stories, and filing complaints.
What happened next is the stuff of grammar legend.
Ellen and her filmmaker husband, Brandt Johnson, took the table on the road, visiting all 50 states as Brandt shot the grammar action. But this story transcends grammar. It’s the story of an epic quest in a divided time to bring us all closer together.
Twin Cities Arab Film Festival Opening Night: The Stories
Sep 23, 2026 7:00 pm - Sep 23, 20269:30 pm
20th Arab Film Festival Opening Night
Wednesday, September 23 at 7:00 PM
Visiting filmmaker: Abu Bakr Shawky
Join us before the opening night film The Stories for a catered reception to celebrate the opening of the twentieth edition of the Twin Cities Arab Film Fest. Entry to reception is included with your Opening Night film ticket, or Arab Film Fest All–Access Pass.
Twin Cities Geek art club meets every Thursday and Sunday evening from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. on the Twin Cities Geeks Discord. Hop on voice/video and chat while you create art, then share your finished pieces on the #art-club channel!
Feel free to invite anybody to participate. The discord invite link is https://twincitiesgeek.com/discord
Monday, September 21 at 7pm + National Punctuation Day Thursday, September 24 at 4pm (with Open Captions)!
ABOUT THE FILM
A grammar guru takes her pop-up grammar advice stand on an epic road trip across all 50 states to show that comma fights can bring us closer together in a divided time.
One fall day, Ellen Jovin set up a folding table on a Manhattan sidewalk with a homemade sign that said “Grammar Table.” Right away, passersby began excitedly asking questions, telling stories, and filing complaints.
What happened next is the stuff of grammar legend.
Ellen and her filmmaker husband, Brandt Johnson, took the table on the road, visiting all 50 states as Brandt shot the grammar action. But this story transcends grammar. It’s the story of an epic quest in a divided time to bring us all closer together.
Twin Cities Arab Film Festival: Minnesota Made: Shorts and Fragments + Discussion
Sep 24, 2026 5:30 pm - Sep 24, 20267:30 pm
20th Arab Film Festival
Thursday, September 24 at 5:30 PM
Minnesota Made: Shorts and Fragments presents films from local Arab, Muslim and SWANA artists working across artistic and visual media. This segment includes finished films, collaborations, and works-in-progress by image-makers from our local(ish) community.
A short discussion with the filmmakers will follow the screening.
Twin Cities Arab Film Festival: Outdoor Screening: Mystery Classic Film
Sep 24, 2026 7:00 pm - Sep 24, 202610:00 pm
20th Arab Film Festival
Outdoor Screening: Mystery Classic Film under the 3rd Avenue bridge (across from The Main Cinema)
Join us for a free outdoor screening of the mystery classic film. Want a hint? It's a musical comedy starring Lebanese icon Fairuz and directed by seminal Egyptian director Youssef Chahine. RSVP here.
This program is free, suggested donation $10.
7:00 PM: Before the film, grab bites from the Baba’s Hummus food truck and Mi’aawaa Bakery, and wine from Batroun Mountain Wines for a suggested donation. Plus tunes from the fab DJ Jacques!
8:00 PM: Screening of mystery film. A limited number of chairs will be available. Please bring your own chair!
Twin Cities Arab Film Festival: Who Killed Alex Odeh?
Sep 25, 2026 1:00 pm - Sep 25, 20262:30 pm
20th Arab Film Festival
Friday, September 25 at 1:00 PM
ABOUT THE FILM
Activist, teacher, and poet Alex Odeh was a leading voice in his community, advocating in the media for peace and justice through dialogue and respect for all people. In October 1985, he was assassinated by a tripwire bomb placed in his office. Despite evidence and suspects identified at the time, no one has ever been held accountable for this horrible act of political violence. Using archival footage and contemporary investigation, we are taken back to the time of Odeh’s murder and trace the extremist forces that may have been behind his death and the disturbing ramifications that remain today.
FILMMAKER BIO
William Lafi Youmans is Associate Professor in Residence at Northwestern University in Qatar. He codirected and coproduced Who Killed Alex Odeh?, a documentary film that premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and Berlinale. He is interested in questions of transnationalism, power, and communication, and his primary research interests are global news, law, Middle East politics, and Arab American studies.
Jason Osder is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and associate professor of media and public affairs at The George Washington University. His work focuses on issues of power and identity in American history and he brings twenty years of experience teaching media arts and technologies with a pedagogy of learning by doing.
PRESENTED BY MIZNA
Mizna is a critical platform for contemporary literature, film, art, and cultural production centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists. For more than 25 years, Mizna has been creating a decolonized cultural space to reflect the expansiveness of our community and to foster exchange, examine ideas, and engage audiences in meaningful art.
Twin Cities Arab Film Festival: Hadi Moussally Retrospective
Sep 25, 2026 7:00 pm - Sep 25, 20268:45 pm
20th Arab Film Festival
Friday, September 25 at 7:00 PM
Mizna presents a retrospective of Hadi Moussally’s short films, with the filmmaker in attendance. Hadi combines a multifaceted filmmaking approach with a very clear discourse on what it is to be gay and Arab, both in his country of origin and in his adopted countries. Through her drag alter ego Salma Zahore, she takes us to a colorful world and a hilarious countryside—offering the LGBTIQ+ community in the SWANA region one of those valuable spaces for freedom and expression—without losing sight of the adverse social and legal environment with which they have to coexist.
Featuring alter-ego Salma Zahore, an ongoing project and persona of Hadi Moussally, this collection of shorts includes Les Fleure du Mâle, Abaya Rocks, and Salma à la plage, all filmed while traveling to various countries. The majority of these captivating and colorful moments are around a minute and without dialogue, reminiscent of music video culture, and in deep drag tradition.
Visiting filmmakers: Hadi Moussally, Olivier Pagny
Twin Cities Arab Film Festival: Stories of Rupture: Shorts
Sep 26, 2026 12:30 pm - Sep 26, 20262:15 pm
20th Arab Film Festival
Saturday, September 26 at 12:30 PM
We imagine time as a continuum—from past, through our present, to the future. Yet, ruptures continually disturb our real experiences of time. This selection of short films explores themes of rupture and separation through multiple lenses, manifesting in the various, connected forms of familial separation, cultural dislocation, and the physical rupture of forced displacement. Each film allows us to reflect on how these ruptures come to be, the anxieties they impose, and how we move forward, or how we remain, in the split paths they create.
20th Arab Film Festival
Saturday, September 26 at 4:30 PM
Q&A with dir. Suzannah Mirghani, moderated by Safia Elhillo
ABOUT THE FILM
Set in a cotton-farming village in Sudan, Cotton Queen follows teenage Nafisa as she stands at the crossroads of tradition, modernity, and survival. Guided by her grandmother, Al-Sit, whose stories and memories of resistance against colonialism still shape the village, Nafisa becomes the focal point of a new struggle when a wealthy entrepreneur arrives from abroad with a proposal to modernize the village’s cotton industry and seeks her hand in marriage. Torn between personal longing and communal duty, Nafisa must navigate the fragile balance between empowerment and expectation. Suzannah Mirghani’s debut feature explores local folklore, magical realism, and searing political critiques
FILMMAKER BIO
Suzannah Mirghani is a filmmaker and writer based in Doha, where she works as an editor at Georgetown University in Qatar. Her acclaimed short film Al-Sit (2020) won the Canal+ Award at Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival in 2021 as well as six Academy Award qualifying prizes at Tampere Film Festival. Al-Sit has screened widely, including on Netflix MENA. Her other works include Virtual Voice (2021) and Kamala Ibrahim Ishag: States of Oneness (2022), commissioned by Serpentine Galleries. Cotton Queen (2025), winner of the ArteKino Award at L’Atelier de la Cinéfondation at Cannes Film Festival in 2022, marks her feature directorial debut.
MODERATOR BIO
Sudanese by way of Washington D.C., Safia Elhillo is the author of Girls That Never Die, The January Children, Home Is Not a Country, and Bright Red Fruit, and co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem and Stanford University, and her awards include a California Book Award, the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and an Arab American Book Award. She lives in Los Angeles, where she is a co-poetry editor at Callaloo and teaches in the low-residency MFA programs at Antioch and Pacific Universities. Her newest collection, Psychogeography, is forthcoming in 2027.
20th Arab Film Festival
Saturday, September 26 at 7:00 PM
Prerecorded Q&A with director Lana Daher.
This film is presented with the support of Alliance Française.
ABOUT THE FILM
Do You Love Me is a personal journey through Lebanon’s audiovisual memory, composed entirely of archival footage. It is a love letter to Beirut, spanning 70 years of film, TV, home videos, and photography, exploring the Lebanese collective psyche – marked by joy and intimacy, destruction and loss. Through the eyes of citizens, filmmakers and artists, the film reconstructs a fragmented history in a country without a national archive, celebrating creative expression as both resistance, renewal and a way to preserve memory. To accompany the film, Daher has created a website, doyouloveme.film, which serves as an annotated index of her sources.
FILMMAKER BIO
Lana Daher is a filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist based in Beirut, Lebanon. With a background in filmmaking (MA, Goldsmiths, University of London) as well as fine arts & graphic design (BFA, American University of Beirut), she has long been active in Beirut’s vibrant art and music scenes, working across sound, image, and archival practices. Alongside the film, she created a website a curated index of the resources and materials behind the project, aimed at reconnecting Lebanese film heritage with both local and wider audiences: doyouloveme.film
PRESENTED BY MIZNA
Mizna is a critical platform for contemporary literature, film, art, and cultural production centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists. For more than 25 years, Mizna has been creating a decolonized cultural space to reflect the expansiveness of our community and to foster exchange, examine ideas, and engage audiences in meaningful art.
w/ an introduction by Jeremy Marder of the Chicago-film-focused Four Stars podcast and followed by Tom Cruise trivia by John McConville, host of Trivia Mafia's Music & Movies Trivia.
Twin Cities Geek art club meets every Thursday and Sunday evening from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. on the Twin Cities Geeks Discord. Hop on voice/video and chat while you create art, then share your finished pieces on the #art-club channel!
Feel free to invite anybody to participate. The discord invite link is https://twincitiesgeek.com/discord
Live Music on the Tattersall Patio (Summer 2026)
Sloppy Discs Presents: Portrait of a Lady on Fire
