The Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe (CCA) is a community-supported arts center that presents many artistic experiences, including contemporary chamber music, theater, visual art, and independent film. With a year-round schedule of activities and numerous weekly events, CCA provides a welcoming space for locals and visitors to engage with the arts.
As Santa Fe’s only independent, nonprofit movie theater, CCA Cinema is a huge draw for film enthusiasts. It features two screening rooms — a 109-seat cinema and a 49-seat cinema — where audiences can enjoy first-run independent films, foreign movies, and documentaries.
In addition to CCA Cinema, CCA partners with several nonprofit organizations based at the center, including Chatter, The Exodus Ensemble, and the Tia Collection. These groups add to the center’s wide-ranging artistic and cultural programming.
Upcoming Events and Film sChedule
LA GRAZIA 
December 12
La Grazia is a sweeping exploration of love, duty, and personal freedom. Toni Servillo, who won Best Actor at the 2025 Venice Film Festival for this role, stars as Italy’s outgoing president, Mariano De Santis, who navigates moral and personal crossroads with the help of his daughter, Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti). This heartfelt masterwork is an intimate meditation on fatherhood, conscience, and the question of personal freedom.
ELLA MCCAY
December 12
This comedy follows an idealistic young woman named Ella McCay as she attempts to juggle the complex demands of her family and work life. The film is a humorous look at the people you love and the various strategies required to survive them.
THE APARTMENT
December 19
The Oscar-winning film The Apartment, directed by Billy Wilder, stars Jack Lemmon as an office worker who attempts to advance his career by lending his apartment to corporate colleagues for their extramarital affairs. His plans go awry when he falls in love with his boss Fred MacMurray’s new romantic interest, played by Shirley MacLaine. The film is a mix of sardonic, satiric comedy with a sad, adult sensibility.
SUNSET BOULEVARD
December 19
Director Billy Wilder’s Oscar-winning masterpiece, Sunset Boulevard, is a dark and glittering poison-pen letter to Hollywood, told in flashback by screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden). His final job is playing paid companion to egocentric, aging silent-film goddess Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). The film is a definitive cinematic classic on the dark and desperate side of Hollywood.
THE SEA
December 21
The Sea is a tense and tender drama following twelve-year-old Khaled, who sets out alone toward the coast after being turned away at a military checkpoint. His journey is paralleled by his father, Ribhi, an undocumented worker who risks everything to find his missing son. The film offers a deeply human portrait of longing, resilience, and the lengths to which a father and child will go to reclaim a dream and reach the universal pull of freedom.
IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE
December 24
The Christmas classic It’s A Wonderful Life follows George Bailey (James Stewart), who is contemplating ending it all on Christmas Eve. As angels discuss his life in flashback, his guardian angel, Clarence, intervenes to show George what his town would have looked like had it not been for all his good deeds, reminding him of his lasting impact.
MARTY SUPREME
December 26
The film follows Marty Mauser, a young man whose ambition for greatness is met with universal disrespect, leading him on a chaotic journey where he must go to “hell and back” in pursuit of his dream.
THE MASTERMIND
December 26
Celebrated filmmaker Kelly Reichardt directs Josh O’Connor in her latest Cannes triumph, The Mastermind. Set in 1970, the film is a brilliant, sly depiction of the folly of man, following unemployed family man and amateur art thief J.B. Mooney as he sets out on his first heist with an ostensibly “airtight” plan. The film also features Alana Haim and Gaby Hoffmann.
AMPLIFIED: STOP MAKING SENSE
December 26
CCA presents the “Amplified” series screening of Stop Making Sense, the 1984 concert film starring Talking Heads’ core members David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, and Jerry Harrison. Newly restored in 4K for its 40th anniversary, the film was directed by Jonathan Demme and is widely considered the greatest concert film of all time, featuring the band’s most memorable songs.
SENTIMENTAL VALUE
December 26
Sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged father, Gustav, a once-renowned director seeking a career comeback. After Nora, a stage actress, rejects a role in his new film, she finds the part has been given to an eager Hollywood star. The sisters must navigate their complicated bond with their father and the presence of an American celebrity caught in their complex family dynamics.
GREMLINS
December 27
In Gremlins, after receiving an exotic small animal as a Christmas gift, a young man inadvertently breaks three important rules concerning his new pet, which unleashes a horde of malevolently mischievous creatures on a small town. This dark comedy and horror film is a unique holiday classic.
DIEHARD
December 27
New York City cop John McClane tries to save his estranged wife and several others taken hostage by terrorists during a Christmas Eve party at the Nakatomi Plaza Skyscraper in Los Angeles, California. Die Hard, the action classic is one of the most debated—and beloved—holiday films.
A CHRISTMAS STORY
December 29
The holiday classic A Christmas Story follows young Ralphie Parker in the 1940s as he attempts to convince his parents, teachers, and Santa Claus that a Red Ryder BB gun is the perfect Christmas gift, despite the constant warnings that he’ll shoot his eye out.
RESURRECTION
January 2
In a future where humanity has traded dreams for immortality, an outcast finds beauty and nightmarish visions in a world of his own making in Resurrection. Directed by Bi Gan, this imaginative journey explores human desire across shifting, collapsing worlds.
KAILI BLUES
January 2
Kaili Blues is a dreamlike odyssey following a doctor’s quest through time and space to find his brother’s child, featuring an astounding forty-one-minute tracking shot.
THE NORTH FACE PRESENTS: FIRST DESCENTS
January 2
The North Face Presents First Descents, high-altitude storytelling featuring two films that travel from the Himalayas to The Great Trango Towers to celebrate exploration and resilience.
ANDREI TARKOVSKY’S SOLARIS
January 2
In Solaris, a psychologist is sent to investigate a remote space station encounters strange phenomena in this science-fiction epic that explores the depths of human consciousness, love, and truth.
FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER
January 9
In Father Mother Sister Brother, Estranged siblings reunite after years apart to confront unresolved tensions and reevaluate their strained relationships with their emotionally distant parents.
NIGHT ON EARTH
January 9
Jim Jarmusch directs Night on Earth, an international cast in five hilarious tales of urban displacement and existential angst across five cities and five taxicabs.
DEAD MAN
January 9
Dead Man is a surreal revisionist western following accountant William Blake on a spiritual journey through an existential wasteland, featuring a live-wire score by Neil Young.
THE SEALED SOIL
January 9
The Sealed Soil is the earliest surviving feature directed by an Iranian woman, this masterstroke of world cinema chronicles a young woman’s resistance to forced marriage and her family’s misinterpreted reaction.
YOUNG MOTHERS
January 16
Young Mothers depicts four young women In a Liège shelter as they navigate the challenges of early motherhood while striving to break cycles of neglect and build stable futures for their children.
HAMNET
January 16
Hamnet, starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, this film explores the powerful love story and tragic loss that inspired William Shakespeare to write his timeless masterpiece, Hamlet.
MAGELLAN
January 16
Magellan, is a globe-spanning epic from filmmaker Lav Diaz that reimagines Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage and the colonization of the Philippines as a radical retelling of European narratives of discovery.
THE SECRET AGENT
January 16
In 1977 Brazil, a researcher becomes a target of the dictatorship’s political maelstrom and must navigate mercenary killers and underground resistance to escape with his young son in The Secret Agent.
SPEAK. + FILMMAKER Q&A
January 17
Speak. is a documentary following five teenage orators competing at the high-stakes NSDA Nationals, featuring a post-screening Q&A with the filmmaker to discuss the power of youth voices.
CLOSER LOOKS: ATANARJUAT: THE FAST RUNNER
January 22
A special screening of Zacharias Kunuk’s arctic epic about an Inuit hunter’s escape from a cycle of vengeance, featuring an introduction and slideshow by programmer Cole Forrest.
OBEX
January 23
Obex is a lo-fi fantasy In 1987, where a secluded man becomes trapped in an analog hellscape after playing a mysterious computer game in this surreally nostalgic, shot in striking black and white.
THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER
January 23
Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut, The Chronology of Water, is a raw, unflinching portrait of survival and self-invention based on Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir, following a woman’s visceral journey through trauma, addiction, and art.
ALL THAT’S LEFT OF YOU
January 23
All That’s Left of You is a multigenerational drama tracing seven decades of a Palestinian family’s history, following a teenager’s involvement in a West Bank protest and his mother’s account of their survival and dispossession.
THE VOICE OF HIND RAJAB
January 30
Based on true events, The Voice of Hind Rajab, is an acclaimed drama following Red Crescent volunteers attempting to rescue a six-year-old girl trapped under fire, blending dramatization with a powerful reality.
ISLANDS
January 30
In this twisty thriller, Islands, a tennis coach at a tropical resort becomes the prime suspect in a missing persons mystery after an enigmatic tourist’s husband disappears.
SOUND OF FALLING
January 30
Spanning a century on a single farm in northern Germany, Sound of Falling follows four young women whose lives mirror one another as the walls of their shared home reveal long-hidden secrets.
FIUME O MORTE!
January 30
Croatian filmmaker Igor Bezinović explores the 1919 invasion of Fiume by poet Gabriele D’Annunzio in Fiume o Morte! through a darkly comic hybrid of archival footage and brashly anachronistic re-enactments featuring modern-day residents.
NADJA
February 6
Nadja is a moody, postmodern vampire tale set in 1990s New York, this 4K restoration blends surrealism and cult horror as a vampire is pursued by a descendant of Van Helsing.
SUGAR ISLAND
February 6
A Dominican-Haitian teenager living in a sugarcane community embarks on a journey into adulthood when an unwanted pregnancy leads her to discover her own power through mystical entities in Sugar Island.
THE LOVE THAT REMAINS
February 13
In The Love that Remains, Filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason explores the quiet grandeur of the Icelandic countryside through the lives of an artist and a fisherman as they navigate the fractures and devotions of their marriage.
MY FATHER’S SHADOW
February 13
Set against the political landscape of 1993 Lagos, My Father’s Shadow is a poetic debut exploring the tender bonds and unspoken depths between a father and his two sons during a time of national crisis.
NATCHEZ
February 13
Suzannah Herbert’s award-winning documentary, Natchez, captures the clash between history and memory in a Mississippi town reliant on antebellum tourism, following a mosaic of residents as they grapple with a past that remains deeply ingrained in the present.
OPERA ON SCREEN SANTA FE: LA BOHÈME
February 14
The Santa Fe Opera presents a free screening of Puccini’s timeless tale, La Bohème, set in 1920s Paris, following six Bohemians in pursuit of connection and art, preceded by a family-friendly presentation.
BY DESIGN
February 20
In this absurdist body-swap comedy, By Design, a woman swaps forms with a designer chair and finds she is better liked as an inanimate object, while the piece’s new owner becomes romantically fixated on his possession.
See You at the Center for Contemporary art!
The Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe (CCA) offers a year-round schedule of films, activities, and numerous weekly events. Engage with the arts in one of two screening rooms to enjoy first-run independent films, retrospective films, foreign movies, and documentaries. CCA’s broad range of screenings and events provides something for everyone. Check out the lineup and be part of the experience!
This article was posted by Jess
