IFC Center is Greenwich Village’s independent movie theater at 323 Sixth Avenue, showing foreign, documentary, and art house films you won’t find at a standard multiplex. If you’re looking for smart, offbeat cinema in Manhattan, this is where New Yorkers already go.
Latin Film at IFC Center
Lost Chapters (Los capítulos perdidos)
Venezuelan family drama by Lorena Alvarado where her family’s and her country’s decline are mirror images
In Spanish with subtitles.
Opens Fri, July 24, 2026
Director Q&As: Fri-Sat, July 24-25 after the 7pm screening
$20
After years living abroad, Ena returns home to Caracas and finds her family caught between two kinds of loss. Her grandmother is losing her grip on memory, while her father spends his time chasing down rare, disappearing pieces of Venezuelan literary history. The film blends documentary and fiction techniques, following Ena as she searches her father’s bookshop and uncovers a postcard that sends her looking for a forgotten writer, using her family’s personal unraveling as a way into a larger story about a country trying to hold onto its own history.
It’s a rare opportunity to see Venezuela from the inside. Before corrupt governments stole everything, it was the richest country in Latin America and produced great modern art and fun rock and roll. Venezuelans were some of the Latinos most similar to Americans. They absorbed American ways from the Texans who built the oil fields in the 1920s. Venezuela today is a cautionary tale for our own country. Corruption destroys civilizations, and after a great fall, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, can’t put the country back together again.
One more detail worth knowing: Cinema Tropical’s coverage notes a portion of the box office proceeds from the release will go to victims of the recent earthquakes in Venezuela.
Barrio Triste
Colombian American found-footage crime drama, by Stillz who is Bad Bunny’s videographer, with a score by Venezuelan musician Arca.
In Spanish with subtitles.
Opens Fri, July 10, 2026
$20
Set on the outskirts of Medellín in the late 1980s, the film opens when strange lights reportedly descend from the sky, drawing a television news crew to investigate. A group of teenagers from a lawless neighborhood steals the crew’s camera, and the film becomes what the teens themselves capture with it — an immersive, fragmented record of their daily routines, small crimes, and search for meaning inside a childhood shaped by poverty and violence. Interspersed interviews with the boys blur the line between confession, myth, and possible alien encounter, leaving open whether the strange lights were ever real at all.
Petty crime is a reality in poor neighborhoods, not just in Medellín, but around the world. It’s what happens when governments support the rich and ignore the poor, which is most people (and it’s not their fault). We need education and healthcare, not billionaires and endless war.
What Is IFC Center?
IFC Center is an art house movie theater located at 323 Sixth Avenue at West 3rd Street in Greenwich Village. It opened on June 17, 2005, and is owned by AMC Networks through its IFC division.
The theater sits inside a building with real New York film history. It was formerly the Waverly Theater, an art house cinema that had operated on the same corner since 1937.
The Waverly’s most famous film was midnight screenings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” which launched an American cultural phenomena on April Fool’s Day, 1976. It was the perfect film for the Village of that era. It was not the New York City we know today. 1977 was the bottom of NYC’s long decline from the busy peak of World War II. At times the streets weren’t very different from the film.
When the Waverly closed in 2001, the site sat dark for years before IFC transformed it into the multiplex New Yorkers know today.
A Nod to the Past
IFC kept a few pieces of the Waverly alive on purpose:
The corner even made it into pop culture history. The iconic 1968 musical Hair references “the Waverly” in its song “Frank Mills,” cementing this stretch of Sixth Avenue as part of Greenwich Village’s cultural memory.
What Makes IFC Center Different From a Regular Movie Theater
IFC Center doesn’t program like a chain multiplex. Instead of wall-to-wall blockbusters, expect:
Signature Recurring Series
A few programs give regulars a reason to keep coming back:
Waverly Midnights — late-night cult and genre films, a direct callback to the site’s Waverly-era identityWeekend Classics — repertory screenings of celebrated older filmsQueer/Art/Film — LGBTQ-focused programming
A few programs give regulars a reason to keep coming back:
Theater Setup
The venue is built for cinephiles rather than crowds. It runs multiple smaller auditoriums rather than one giant screen, with digital projection alongside 35mm capability for film purists.
IFC Center and DOC NYC
If you only know one thing about IFC Center’s programming beyond its daily schedule, it should be this: the theater is the principal venue for DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary film festival. Held every November, DOC NYC brings hundreds of documentary screenings and guest filmmakers to IFC Center’s auditoriums, making it one of the most important stops on the city’s documentary film calendar.
Amenities Worth Knowing About
Beyond the screens themselves, IFC Center has a few details that set it apart from a standard theater visit:
Tips for Visiting IFC Center
Is IFC Center Worth Visiting?
For anyone who wants to see the kind of film that doesn’t play at a standard chain theater, yes. IFC Center combines a real piece of Greenwich Village movie history with programming built for people who take film seriously, from documentary premieres to cult midnight screenings, all inside one of the neighborhood’s most walkable corners.