San Francisco Is Building Its First New Movie Theater in More Than a Decade

Despite a passionate Bay Area film culture, San Francisco has been hit hard over the last 15 years by iconic arthouse and first-run movie theater closures. From the Landmark-owned Embarcadero Center complex shuttering in 2023 to AMC taking over the beloved indie Sundance Kabuki in Japantown 10 years ago, venue attrition has empowered newer but more commercial hotspots like the Mission District’s Alamo Drafthouse to thrive. More recently, the once-doomed Castro Theatre finally reopened as a movie palace this year before nearly becoming just another live event space in a historic building.

But as announced on Thursday, a new exhibition hub is set to open in SF’s famed Mission District this fall: The nonprofit, single-screen The Portal Cinema will live at 3293 Mission Street, where it’s currently under construction on a previously vacant commercial lot. The theater will showcase new global releases, repertory works, special programs, and more, and will be equipped to screen archive-only 35mm and 16mm prints, along with digital formats. The Portal Cinema marks the first new movie theater built in San Francisco in more than a decade, according to its backers.

As of writing, a crowdfunding campaign has launched on Kickstarter to ensure the Portal’s opening. With a goal of raising $250,000, the campaign aims to fund an electrical panel upgrade, 35mm projection, and a 5.1 sound system so it can open at full capacity this fall.

The Portal Cinema is the brainchild of founder and SF native Nellie Killian, who returns to the Bay Area after two decades in New York City as a film programmer and curator. Killian has supervised programming at Brooklyn’s BAM and Lower Manhattan’s Metrograph, as well as for the Criterion Channel, British Film Institute, and Queens’ Museum of the Moving Image.

“Over the past decade, the Bay Area has lost many of our most vital independent theaters and alternative arts spaces,” said Killian in a press statement. “The intention of The Portal Cinema is to complement the diverse artistic institutions in San Francisco and offer adventurous programming in an intimate, community-focused space. We want to cultivate an enthusiastic audience that makes every screening feel like a must-see event and uses our lobby as a social space where they can meet other cinema enthusiasts from across the Bay.”

The Portal Cinema will also host industry events, including private press and tastemaker screenings, along with awards-season showings and receptions. The Bay Area, after all, holds the third-largest concentration of Academy members and film professionals in the U.S. after New York and Los Angeles, making the venue a new opportunity to reach Academy voters living in Northern California.

San Francisco is also home to SFFILM, the nonprofit society that brings programming and events regularly to the Bay Area, including the annual San Francisco International Film Festival.

More details on programming will be announced soon. The Portal Cinema is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.