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Festival Theaters Palm Springs

Festival Theaters is Palm Springs' independent, first-run home for new cinema.

06/18/2026

🍽️🎬 Internet food culture is about to get very weird.

Join us on July 23 at 7PM for the opening of Maddie’s Secret, followed by a live Q&A with writer, director, and star John Early, moderated by Catherine Liu.

Early stars as Maddie, a rising food influencer whose picture-perfect online life begins to unravel as viral fame, personal pressure, and a hidden struggle collide. Blending satire, melodrama, camp, and emotional sincerity, Maddie’s Secret skewers content culture while finding something surprisingly tender underneath.

Featuring an incredible comedy ensemble including Kate Berlant, Vanessa Bayer, Conner O’Malley, Kristen Johnston, and more, this is one of the year’s boldest, strangest, and most talked-about indie comedies.

🎬 Maddie’s Secret
📅 July 23
🕖 7PM
🎤 Live Q&A with John Early, moderated by Catherine Liu

06/17/2026

📸💔🍸 Love is complicated. Dating is chaos. Los Angeles only makes it weirder.

Join us on Saturday, July 11 at 7PM for a special screening of Situations, the acclaimed new comedy-drama from writer, director, and star Greg Vrotsos, followed by a live Q&A with the filmmaker.

Set in Silver Lake, Situations follows a photographer trying to navigate life, love, ambition, and modern dating three months after a breakup. As he stumbles through awkward encounters, well-meaning friends, and fleeting romances, he’s forced to confront what he actually wants—and whether he’s ready to move forward.

Featuring a stellar cast including Fiona Dourif, P.J. Byrne, Katie Parker, and Melora Walters, Situations is a funny, heartfelt, and refreshingly honest look at relationships in contemporary Los Angeles.

🎬 Situations
📅 Saturday, July 11
🕖 7PM
🎤 Live Q&A with director Greg Vrotsos

Come for the laughs, stay for the existential crisis. 🍿✨

06/16/2026

⚖️🎬 Behind some of Hollywood’s most infamous deaths was one man with a scalpel, a microscope, and a front-row seat to history.

Join us on Friday, June 26 at 7PM for a special screening of Coroner to the Stars, the fascinating new documentary about legendary Los Angeles County Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi. Known as the “Coroner to the Stars,” Dr. Noguchi investigated the deaths of some of the 20th century’s most famous figures—including Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, Natalie Wood, Janis Joplin, John Belushi, and many more.

Now, at 98 years old, Dr. Noguchi finally tells his side of the story in this remarkable documentary exploring his groundbreaking career, public controversies, and lasting impact on forensic science.

Following the screening, stay for a live Q&A with director Ben Hethcoat and producer Billy Ray Bruton.

🎬 Coroner to the Stars
📅 Friday, June 26
🕖 7PM
🎤 Live Q&A with Ben Hethcoat & Billy Ray Bruton

Part true crime, part Hollywood history, and part portrait of an extraordinary life, this is a story you won’t want to miss.

06/12/2026

🏳️‍🌈🎬 Join us on June 20 at 7:30PM for a special Pride Month screening of the iconic q***r classic Brokeback Mountain—plus a very special local premiere.

Before the feature, we’ll be screening Dig My Hole, a new short film created by desert-based filmmaker Síle P. Heaney and a team of trans filmmakers, including Joshua Tree cinematographer Dee Limvere and producer Lorin Murphy. Inspired in part by Brokeback Mountain, the film explores themes of masculinity, emotional vulnerability, sexuality, and the search for freedom in the natural world.

Following the short, stay for a live Q&A with the filmmakers and hear firsthand about the creation of the film before it begins its festival run.

Support local q***r artists, independent filmmaking, and one of the most beloved LGBTQ+ films ever made—all in one unforgettable evening.

Ticket link in bio!

🎟️ June 20 • 7:30PM
📍 Festival Theaters
🎬 Dig My Hole + filmmaker Q&A
🏳️‍🌈 Brokeback Mountain

***rcinema

06/10/2026

🎬 Opening Friday, June 15: Time and Water

Part environmental documentary, part visual poem, Time and Water is a breathtaking meditation on our relationship with the natural world—and the ways that climate change is reshaping it before our eyes.

Through stunning cinematography and deeply personal storytelling, the film explores the connections between family, memory, glaciers, oceans, and the passage of time itself. Thought-provoking, moving, and visually extraordinary, Time and Water invites audiences to reflect on what we inherit, what we leave behind, and our place within a rapidly changing world.

If you love documentaries that challenge, inspire, and linger in your thoughts long after the credits roll, don’t miss Time and Water on the big screen.

Opening June 15 at Festival Theaters. 🍿✨

06/05/2026

🎬 Opening today: Mad Bills to Pay

One of the most acclaimed indie debuts of the year, Mad Bills to Pay follows 19-year-old Rico, a Bronx hustler spending his summer selling homemade cocktails on the beach, getting into trouble, and avoiding responsibility—until his pregnant teenage girlfriend moves in with his family and forces him to confront adulthood head-on.

Writer-director Joel Alfonso Vargas crafts an intimate, funny, and deeply human portrait of Dominican-American life in the Bronx, populated by unforgettable characters and performances that feel astonishingly real. The film won a Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast at the Sundance Film Festival and has earned widespread critical acclaim.

Critics have called it an “empathetic” and “beautiful mess” of a coming-of-age story, praising its warmth, authenticity, and richly observed portrait of a community rarely seen on screen.

If you love discovering the next great independent filmmaker before everyone else does, don’t miss Mad Bills to Pay… at Festival Theaters! 🍿✨

06/04/2026

🎬🌴 Needle Drops continues tomorrow with the ultimate California coming-of-age classic: Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Learn about Cuba. Learn about dating. Learn about life. Learn why ordering pizza to class is never a bad idea. 🍕

Packed with unforgettable characters, endlessly quotable moments, and a killer soundtrack, Fast Times at Ridgemont High captures all the awkwardness, comedy, heartbreak, and chaos of being a teenager better than almost any film ever made.

Featuring early appearances from future stars including Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Forest Whitaker, Nicolas Cage, and more, this is one of the defining teen movies of the 1980s.

As if we’d miss it.

Opening tomorrow, June 5. 🍿🎶

06/01/2026

🌈🎬 June is Pride Month, and we’ve packed the calendar with an incredible lineup of q***r cinema, special events, beloved classics, and can’t-miss premieres.

Join us for the premiere of Stop! That! Train!, featuring a live Q&A with star Guy Branum, casting director Brett Greenstein, and moderator Deven Green. Experience the wildly original documentary Puppygirl with filmmaker Q&A, revisit q***r classics like Brokeback Mountain alongside the short film Dig My Hole and a live conversation with its creators, and catch special screenings of Leviticus and Girls Like Girls.

And that’s just part of the month.

We’ve also got major studio releases, repertory favorites, filmmaker discussions, and plenty more surprises headed to the big screen this June. 🍿✨

Check out the calendar, make your plans, and celebrate Pride Month at Festival Theaters. 🌈

***rcinema

05/29/2026

🚗🎶 Opening today: American Graffiti

Before Star Wars, George Lucas made this nostalgic, funny, bittersweet love letter to youth, cruising, and rock & roll. Set over the course of one unforgettable night in 1962, American Graffiti follows a group of friends as they navigate first loves, big dreams, and the uncertainty of what comes next.

And because it’s part of our Needle Drops series, we have to talk about the soundtrack. Packed wall-to-wall with classic hits from the golden age of rock & roll, the music doesn’t just accompany the story—it is the story. 🎵✨

Featuring early performances from Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, and Harrison Ford, American Graffiti remains one of the greatest coming-of-age films ever made.

See it the way it was meant to be seen: on the big screen. 🍿

05/26/2026

30 days.
5 wildly different events.
A whole lot of unforgettable nights. 🎬✨

From welcoming Paul Thomas Anderson for a screening of Hard Eight and live Q&A… to celebrating bold new voices through our Q***r Premieres series with Idiotka and F*cktoys… to cheering, gasping and laughing our way through the wildly unhinged HUMP! Film Festival.

We hosted the Palm Springs premiere of Stolen Kingdom with director Joshua Bailey live in person.

And you turned out to make it happen. YOU made this month possible.

***rcinema

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789 E Tahquitz Canyon Way
Palm Springs, CA
92262

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https://festivaltheaters.com/

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