AAVCLUB @ Austin Film Festival

Use code AFF33FP for a $10 discount on Austin Film Festival 2026 Film Passes, which offer unlimited access to all of our AAPI film picks and more!

Check out these AAPI films from their lineup.

• TIGER MOM ACADEMY (Canada, China, UK, 101 MIN) World Premiere

  Thursday, October 29, 2026 7:05pm - 9:10pmCDT | State Theatre
  Director: Shawn Shao-Wen Chou
  Cast: Jingchu Zhang, Michelle Krusiec, Ken Jeong, Lochlyn Munro
  A family comedy about a desperate housewife who joins a cult of Tiger Moms to discipline her rebellious children.

• CHOPIN | (US, 85 MIN) World Premiere

  Sunday, November 1, 2026 3:45pm - 5:35pmCST | Galaxy Theater Screen 6

  Writer/Director: Vincent Lin
  Cast: Eddie Liu, Violett Beane, Leon Dai, Min Wu
  A second-generation Taiwanese American returns to his small American hometown to reconnect with the workaholic father he barely knows.

• SISA (Philippines, 115 MIN) Texas Premiere

  Sunday, November 1, 2026 12:30pm - 2:50pmCST | Galaxy Theater Screen 6

  Writer/Director: Jun Robles Lana
  Cast: Hilda Koronel, Eugene Domingo, Jennica Garcia, Tanya Gomez
  In 1902, a "mad woman" who witnessed the slaughter of her family during the gruesome Philippine-American War turns out to be a spy for the Filipino revolutionaries.

• LOOK BACK (Japan, 100 MIN) Austin Premiere

  Monday, November 2, 2026 5:30pm - 7:15pmCST | Texas Spirit Theatre

  Writer/Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
  Cast: Natsuki Deguchi, Aju Makita, Furi Nanase, Rokka Okada
  Two manga artists, the brash Fujino and the reclusive Kyomoto, meet and develop a bond over making manga.

• SUMO | (Japan, 99 MIN) Texas Premiere

  Tuesday, November 3, 2026 5:30pm - 7:14pmCST | Texas Spirit Theatre

  Director: Erik Shirai
  SUMO: SPIRIT WEIGHS NOTHING grants rare inside access to Japan’s hidden world of sumo. Over a turbulent year, wrestlers at every stage of their career fight to endure, revealing that true strength is measured not in flesh, but in spirit.

AAVCLUB @ AFS Cinema

*$4 off with code: AAAFF$4

Applicable for additional showtimes of the films listed below as well. Check AFS Cinema schedule for most updated showtimes.

KWAIDAN

Directed by Masaki Kobayashi | Japan
1965, 3h 3min, In Japanese with English subtitles.

“Both gorgeous and scary … It can still hold its own against the new generation of horror films still sourcing it.”
—Empire

“A horror picture with an extraordinarily delicate and sensuous quality.”
—The New York Times

“This is unsettling, uncanny horror, in which each individual tale leisurely builds to a macabre punchline.”
—BFI

Oct. 6, 10, 11 | Full of widescreen compositions of weird, delicate beauty, KWAIDAN will linger in your dreams long after you see it. Though KWAIDAN tells four ghost stories, the intent is never to shock, though the atmosphere of unexplainable otherness creates a miasma of fear and dread. Winner of a Special Jury Prize at Cannes.

JIGOKU

Directed by Nobuo Nakagawa | Japan
1960, 1h 41min, DCP, In Japanese with English subtitles.

“If you came for the art, this movie might be your little slice of heaven.”
—Japanese Film Archive

“JIGOKU is more than merely a boundary-pummeling classic of the horror genre — it’s as lurid a study of sin without salvation as the silver screen has ever seen.”
—Film Forum

Oct. 13, 17 | Join us for a trip to Buddhist Hell with a group of sinners in this shocking and visceral Japanese moral horror classic. Nobuo Nakagawa is a master of low-budget horror, and he doesn’t spare any of the sufferings of the afterlife in this colorful Cinemascope fantasia.

ONIBABA

Directed by Kaneto Shindo | Japan
1964, 1h 42min, 35mm, In Japanese with English subtitles.

“A chilling movie, a waking nightmare shot in icy monochrome, and filmed in a colossal and eerily beautiful wilderness … An erotic noir tale of psychological horror that is brilliantly subversive, and yet in its way intuitive and faithful.”
—The Guardian

Oct. 20, 24 | In Kaneto Shindô’s stately-but-shocking ghost story, a mother and daughter live on the fringes of a civil war, making a grim living killing soldiers who wander through their bamboo grove and selling their armor. As you might expect, the story takes a supernatural turn that is as stylish and spooky as anyone could hope. In 35mm.

KUNG FU HUSTLE

Directed by Stephen Chow | Hong Kong
2004, 1h 39min, DCP, in Mandarin and Cantonese with English subtitles

“Like Jackie Chan and Buster Keaton meet Quentin Tarantino and Bugs Bunny. You see how worked up you can get, watching a movie like this.”
–Roger Ebert

“The celluloid equivalent of a gallon of espresso.”
–The Guardian

“Its dreamy unfolding of so many moods and genres becomes intoxicating.”
–New York Magazine

Oct. 23, 24, 28 | Stephen Chow’s ludicrously energetic action comedy masterpiece is full of diabolical martial-arts in-jokes, Looney Tunes pacing, and more successful gags than any other movie this century. You need the big screen to keep up with them all.

THE SNAKE GIRL AND THE SILVER-HAIRED WITCH

Directed by Noriaki Yuasa | Japan
1966, 1h 22min, DCP, In Japanese with English Subtitles

“A truly wild spook show of a movie that almost feels proto-De Palma at times.”
— Mondo Digital

Oct. 27, 31 | Unlike the previous films in this series, which operate in a high-cultural plane, this one is based on a popular Young Adult manga series by Kazuo Umezu (The Drifting Classroom). A teenager who has grown up in a boarding school returns to her bizarre family home, with a father who is absorbed in his bizarre experiments and a (ghost?) sister. Dreamlike, gothic, and a little silly — just like you.

NAZA (NEW RELEASE)

Directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor

Israel, 2026, 1h 20min, DCP, In Hebrew and English with English subtitles.

Oct 9-15 | Filmed at night from Tel Aviv rooftops, this investigative documentary examines the civilian casualties of Israel’s military operations in Gaza and the systems behind targeted killings of Palestinians. The title refers to an acronym used within the Israeli Defense Forces that means “civilian casualties.” There have been calls within the Israeli government to revoke the citizenship of the filmmakers and the 24 whistleblowers whose stories provide the framework for the investigation, even as NAZA has screened throughout the world at major film festivals.