The Queen

Decades before Paris Is Burning and Rupaul’s Drag Race, this ground-breaking documentary about the 1967 Miss All-America Camp Beauty Pageant introduced competitive drag to the world, along with LGBT icon and activist Flawless Sabrina. Watch for Andy Warhol, one of the pageant’s judges. “The gender identity and racial undercurrents of “The Queen” have a prescient … Read more

Freaks (Advance Screening!)

Directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein‘s FREAKS portrays the story of 7-year-old Chloe, (Lexy Kolker), who lives in both fear under her father’s (Emile Hirsch) protective and paranoid control, and fascination of the outside world, where Abnormals” create a constant threat – or so she believes. When a mysterious stranger (Bruce Dern) offers her a glimpse of … Read more

Maiden

MAIDEN is the story of how Tracy Edwards, a 24-year-old cook in charter boats, became the skipper of the first ever all-female crew to enter the Whitbread Round the World in 1989. Tracy’s inspirational dream was opposed on all sides: her male competitors thought an all-women crew would never make it, the chauvinistic yachting press … Read more

Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (Final Screening!)

Join us at the Rio Theatre as we raise a glass and toast the late, great, Toni Morrison, with a screening of the 2019 documentary TONI MORRISON: THE PIECES I AM for a final, encore screening on Saturday, September 7. TONI MORRISON: THE PIECES I AM offers an artful and intimate meditation on the life … Read more

Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love (Final Screening)

MARIANNE AND LEONARD: WORDS OF LOVE is renowned filmmaker Nick Broomfield‘s (WHITNEY: CAN I BE ME, KURT & COURTNEY) most personal and romantic film of his storied career. The documentary starts on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960, where Leonard Cohen, then a struggling and unknown fiction writer, and Marianne Ihlen, a single mother … Read more

Midsommar

From the visionary mind of Ari Aster (EDDINGTON, HEREDITARY, BEAU IS AFRAID) comes a dread-soaked cinematic fairytale, where a world of darkness unfolds in broad daylight… MIDSOMMAR remains one of our favourite arthouse horror films of the past few years, and what better way to pay homage to the start of summer than with a … Read more

Apocalypse Now: Final Cut

“The horror … The horror…” Gorgeously restored and remastered for its 40th Anniversary in 2019, Francis Ford Coppola’s visionary Vietnam War epic a APOCALYPSE NOW: FINAL CUT returns to the Rio Theatre‘s screen this September. It is the height of the war in Vietnam, and U.S. Army Captain Willard is sent by Colonel Lucas and … Read more

The Last Black Man in San Francisco

As a result of the critical and commercial acclaim of THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO, triple threat Joe Talbot – who directed, wrote and stars in the breakout indie hit – has emerged as a talent to watch in 2019. Talbot stars as Jimmie Fails, who dreams of reclaiming the Victorian home his … Read more

Paul Simon: Under African Skies

Paul Simon’s Grammy Award®-winning album ‘Graceland’ – an irresistible and groundbreaking fusion of American and South African pop music — was an immediate hit when it was released in 1986. It also proved to be a lightning rod for controversy, after South African leaders protested that Simon had broken the cultural boycott of the nation’s … Read more

I Am Patrick Swayze (Canadian Premiere! Director in Attendance for Q&A)

Join us at the Rio Theatre on Tuesday, August 20 for the Canadian Premiere of the locally-produced, highly-anticipated feature documentary I AM PATRICK SWAYZE. Director Adrian Buitenhuis (I AM HEATH LEDGER, I AM SAM KINISON) explores the 1980’s most recognizable leading man, who challenged Hollywood’s very notions of masculinity and redefined what it meant to … Read more