A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

"Even as Ms. Amirpour draws heavily from various bodies of work with vampire like hunger, she gives her influences new life by channeling them through other cultural forms, including her chador-cloaked vampire." —The New York Times

"Ana Lily Amirpour's feature debut could become a totem for a hipster world mad for jukebox funkiness, vampires, and gender-politics righteousness." —Village Voice

Strange things are afoot in Bad City. The Iranian ghost town, home to prostitutes, junkies, pimps, and other sordid souls, is a place that reeks of death and hopelessness, where a lonely vampire is stalking the town's most unsavory inhabitants. But when boy meets girl, an unusual love story begins to blossom...blood red.

As the first Iranian vampire Western, Ana Lily Amirpour's debut feature A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night basks in the sheer pleasure of pulp. A joyful mash-up of genre, archetype and iconography, its prolific influences span spaghetti westerns, graphic novels, horror films, and the Iranian New Wave. Amped by a mix of Iranian rock, techno, and Morricone-inspired riffs, its airy, anamorphic, black-and-white aesthetic and artfully drawn-out scenes combine the simmering tension of Sergio Leone with the surrealism of David Lynch.

"I wanted to make an Iranian film, but the question was how?" Ana Lily Amirpour says. "Since I obviously can't shoot in Iran, the solution became the invention of the entire film; I found a desolate, vacant oil-town in the desert of California which became the fictitious Iranian ghost town Bad City, and suddenly there were no rules. I created my own universe and made the rules. The cast of characters are inspired by pop icons I love from the 50s all the way through the 90s, like James Dean, Sophia Loren, Ninja from Die Antwoord, and of course, the limitless possibilities of a Vampire."

After Hours is the best films you never saw on the big screen (or maybe you did) from late-night cult classics to foreign favorites and even summer blockbusters on weekends. Please note that unclaimed pre-ordered tickets will be sold to the rush line 30 mins after showtime.

Check out the rest of our After Hours program!