What are the opening hours?

Monday 12:30pm - 9pm Tuesday 12:30pm - 9pm Wednesday 12:30pm - 9pm Thursday 12:30pm - 9pm Friday 12:30pm - 11pm Saturday 12:30pm - 11pm Sunday 12:30pm - 9pm

Fine Arts Theatre

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Asheville, NC
Fine Arts Theatre

Dedicated To First Run Art & Independent Films. Reopened in 1997, the Fine Arts Theatre features Art & Independent films.
(626)

John Cram renovated Asheville's last remaining downtown cinema as part of his Adventure in the Arts. Premiering over 50 films a year, the Theatre is open daily with matinées, evening viewings and late shows on Friday and Saturday nights. Ticket Prices:
Matinées - $9.00
Evenings - $11.00
Seniors (60+) - $9.00

Discount tickets for evening shows:
Students / Military - $9.00
Seniors (60+) - $9.00

P

ARKING SUGGESTIONS:
Biltmore Avenue Garage (city parking deck) under the Aloft hotel - The first hour is free, then $1.00 per hour for each additional hour. Metered street parking is free after 6 pm, Monday-Saturday, and all day on Sundays and city holidays.

05/28/2026

OPENING TONIGHT: BACKROOMS, the buzzy new genre flick by first time feature director Kane Parsons, opens tonight in the main auditorium at 7:00 pm.

Expanding on the ideas explored by Parsons in short films on YouTube, this liminal decent into a labyrinth of horror stars Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave, The Life of Chuck) as a former architect who discovers a bizarre entry point under the used furniture store he runs and manages. Ever growing, mysterious, and possibly populated by an unseen presence, the titular BACKROOMS calls to our protagonist until he vanishes into them, prompting his psychiatrist (Renate Reinsve - Sentimental Value, Worst Person in the World) to trace his steps into the liminal void in the hopes of finding answers.

Premiering at 7:00 pm tonight with a full slate of showtimes starting tomorrow (1:00, 4:00, and 7:00), BACKROOMS, produced by a24, will definitively be the talk of the social media sphere for the next few days. Catch it here before someone ruins it for you.

Meanwhile, I LOVE BOOSTERS, Boots Riley’s delightfully madcap, bizarre, and surreal ode to the working class, will head upstairs for the next week - it’ll be playing at 7:20 tonight with the usual 1:20, 4:20, and 7:20 showtimes starting tomorrow 5/29.

05/26/2026

Sending out a huge Thank You to Edwin Arnaudin and Bruce Steele (The Movie Guys) and everyone who came out last night to our super packed Memorial Day screening of ALL THE PRESIDENTS MAN. It was officially their first event in several years, and it was delightful to see such a large turn out. It’s a testament to our community and the power of film itself that so many of you came out on a holiday to see a fifty year old film.

05/24/2026

TOMORROW NIGHT (MEMORIAL DAY 7:00 pm) we are hosting a one time only screening of 1976’s ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN. Local critics Bruce Steele and Edwin Arnaudin will be moderating a short introduction and a post film Q&A that will touch on a variety of subjects concerning this landmark journalism thriller.

Starring Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards, Jack Warden, and Hal Holbrook, ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN is the ripped from the headlines cinematic adaptation of the monumental expose piece and later book by Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. Fifty years old as of last month, the film has remained topical, insightful, and still finds its way onto lists discussing the best films of the 1970s. Come see why its legacy is assured and definitive and why it’s helped launched so many careers in journalism.

It’ll screen tomorrow night - Monday the 25th at 7:00 pm - one time only with tickets going on sale IN PERSON at the box office at 6:30 pm. You could always purchase them ahead of time on our website but, please remember, we will still need you to check in at the box office ahead of time.

05/21/2026

OPENING TONIGHT: I LOVE BOOSTERS, the absurdist new comedy from rapper, songwriter, and filmmaker Boots Riley, starts tonight with a 7:00 opening slot in the main auditorium with our regularly full programming
of 1:00, 4:00, and 7:00 pm starting this weekend.

Director of one of the most original and best comedies of recent year - 2018’s Sorry to Bother You - Riley’s second full feature replicates his debut’s originality, surrealism, and incredible color palate with this maximalist descent into the fashion industry and the virtuous shoplifters who boost from it.

Set in an around a bizarro-world Bay Area, I LOVE BOOSTERS details a philanthropy first coven of Marxist boosters who run afoul of an evil fashion designer who has stolen their designs. The cast is absolutely loaded for this frenetic punch of pro-workers bit of levity with Keke Palmer (Nope), Naomi Ackie (Sorry, Baby), LaKeith Stanfield (Sorry to Bother You, Atlanta), Will Poulter (We’re the Millers), Don Cheadle (Boogie Nights, Oceans Eleven), and Demi Moore (The Substance).

“A tale of class warfare filtered through Looney Toons…I Love Boosters is an imaginative, heightened movie whose thought provoking messages on labor exploitation, capitalism, and consumerism cut through the surreal story.” - Richard Crouse

05/19/2026

The drivers are selected, the cargo is carefully loaded, and the Tangerine Dream score is already thumping as we are approach 24 hours to go before our Wheeler Wednesday screening of William Friedkin’s SORCERER tomorrow night (Wednesday 5/20).

A revolutionary, leftist masterpiece that was besieged and belittled by critics upon release, SORCERER is Friedkin’s self professed “most difficult and personal” film and one of those New Hollywood classics who’s production and release are as legendary as the movie itself. Filmed on location in the Dominican Republic and Mexico with all real effects and practical stunt work, SORCERER is an endurance run of tension, fate, and the thin line between good and evil. It will rattle your nerves, have you clutching your armrest, and leave you in awe at its sheer scale.

It’ll be screening ONLY ONCE tomorrow night at 7:00 pm and will, as always, be hosted by Hurricane Michael Wheeler as he relishes the chance to tell you the sordid, insane real life stories of SORCERER’s production, misfires, and how William Friedkin earned his reputation as one of the craziest, and yet best, filmmakers of his generation. Tickets are ON SALE on our website still and, if any are remaining, be sold at our box office at 6:30 pm to the lucky few left standing.

05/17/2026

HOFFMAN. REDFORD. A WEEK OUT.

This Memorial Day, join us at the Fine Arts Theatre for a one time only screening of the landmark 1976 tentpole drama ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN.

Launching a thousand careers in journalism, the film additionally won four Academy Awards, won best picture in three out of the four major critic awards circuits in 1976, and forever enshrined Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, both at the top of their game here, as the more handsome cinematic doppelgängers of real life Washington Post writers Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Bolstering a screenplay by typewriter God William Goldman (Marathon Man, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride) and direction by Alan J Pakula (Klute, The Pelican Brief, Presumed Innocent), ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN displays a world when journalism actually involved due diligence, checking sources, combative editors, clandestine parking garage meetings, and smoking as many ci******es as you could muster. Come for the absolutely amazing fashion, stay for the legendary and beautiful hair of ones Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.

This will be, again, a ONE TIME ONLY screening so hop on our website and purchase those tickets now to avoid missing out on this one on the big screen. Local critics Edwin Arnaudin and Bruce Steele will provide some insight and context on the film before and after the screening. The show is at 7 pm and the box office and doors will be open at 6:30.

05/14/2026

We’re opening hands down the best film of 2026 (so far) this weekend: Sophy Romvari’s BLUE HERON.

Commencing her career in the realm of short films, the Hungarian-Canadian filmmaker has been crafting this semi-autobiographical look into memory, family tragedy, and narrative conventions for over thirty years and the end result as her first full-length narrative feature is truly incredible. Set in the summer of the late 1990s, it is both a time capsule and an inventive deconstruction of these type of ‘coming of age’ films that is unlike most anything you’ve seen. Michael had the privilege of seeing this one a few weeks ago and he firmly believes it is not only the best film so far this year, he predicts it will be on his year end best of list as well.

“Blue Heron is an absolutely breathtaking film that challenges everything that we think we know—about family, about ourselves, even about the magic of cinema.” - Dave Giannini

BLUE HERON will be playing downstairs at 1:00, 4:00, and 7:00. Christy Lemire of FilmWeek says “This is such a beautiful film, and the less you know about it going in the better” so maybe just take our word for it and roll out for a truly independent, low-budget masterful heartbreaker.

05/13/2026

Officially a week away from this month’s WHEELER WEDNESDAY presentation of William Friedkin’s 1977 masterpiece SORCERER!!! Tickets are still available online for our showing next Wednesday 5/20 at 7:00 pm. We’ve got a beautiful 4K DCP from our distributor that’s going to look and sound incredible in our packed out main auditorium.

SORCERER, Friedkin’s first film following The Exorcist, is in fact a ‘reimagining’ of Henri-George Clouzot Palm D’Or winning THE WAGES OF FEAR (1953) which was in turn based on a novel by George Arnaud. Friedkin earned the blessing of both author and director before even beginning production on this film, and, in true Friedkin fashion, brought his own style and edge to this project. A legendary cinematic achievement of tension, practical effects, and the ways in which fate and naturalism rule our lives, SORCERER is a one of a kind, unforgettable experience.

Wheeler will be talking at length about William Friedkin, the end of the New Hollywood movement, and how they even began to shoot some of the sequences seen in the film both before and after the showing. This is his FIRST showing of a Friedkin film in his storied career so expect about 30 incredible stories about the director who became hatefully and lovingly known as HURRICANE BILLY. See you next Wednesday!!!

05/08/2026

We are less than two weeks away from our one time only screening of Hurricane Billy Friedkin’s operatic and masterful SORCERER at 7:00 pm on 5/20.

Defiantly known as “the unheralded last masterpiece of 1970s cinema,” SORCERER has, within the last ten years, become finally recognized as the stellar and stalwart triumph it always has been since day one. Initially released the same weekend as STAR WARS in 1977, SORCERER was forgotten, overlooked, and trashed as a signal that intellectually driven, auteur cinema was becoming passe in favor of a calorically empty, blockbuster drivel that began to take over around this time and bleed into the new decade (and seemingly hasn’t stopped).

William Friedkin, director of THE FRENCH CONNECTION and THE EXORCIST, considered this his BEST film and, in 2017, labeled it as “the only film of mine I can still watch.” James Kendrick defined it “as a masterful evocation of human desperation and the most intense and compelling depiction of mankind battling the elements to his own destruction not directed by Werner Herzog.”

Naturalistic, bleak, and one of the most intense films ever made, SORCERER is all this and more. It will screen only once and will be introduced and discussed afterward by our very own Michael Wheeler. Tickets are available online on our website. We’ll see you May 20th at 7:00 pm.

- poster designed by artist extraordinaire Tony Stella who recently passed away just this week. If you’re a fan of this incredible style of art, please look up his other posters and renderings. Truly a master of form and composition

05/06/2026

OPENING FRIDAY: We’re back with an actual independently financed arthouse feature this week shot, edited, and directed by Ohio auteur Peter Ohs and starring everyone’s darling CHARLI XCX in her third feature film this year.

ERUPCJA, the Polish word for “Eruption” for you non Poles out there, was shot on location in Warsaw and details a soon to be married couple suffering a catastrophic break-up mid-vacation, culminating in Bethany (Charli XCX) traipsing across Poland with her childhood friend amidst nights of partying, situationships, and revelatory self-discovery. Think Hou Hsaio-hsien’s MILLENNIUM MAMBO meets the more freewheeling works of Wong Kar-Wei, and you’re about halfway there for this fly on the wall, written as it was shot cinematic experiment. It will be starting this Friday at 1:00, 4:00, and 7:00 pm in the main auditorium.

05/05/2026

TOMORROW NIGHT (5/6) we are hosting a one time only screening of the brand new film THE GARDNER with its director Dabney Day in attendance! This is an independently financed, locally shot production (most of the film being shot on location in The Highlands, NC) that we’re excited to be premiering.

THE GARDNER tells the story of a recently grieving cosmetics CEO who, after a health scare, finds solace in a quaint, pastoral cottage she impulsively purchases in the heart of western North Carolina. There, she finds an adjacent garden that she throws herself into with the help of a mysterious and handsome stranger.

“The Gardener emerged from the belief that within each of us lives a quiet, guiding light. When we listen to that voice and follow it, we are forever changed. In the darkest moments, even the smallest flame can reveal the path forward—and it is our choices along that path that define who we become” - Director Dabney Day

Tickets are on sale now on our website and will be available to purchase at the box office tomorrow night at 6:30. Show will start at 7:00 pm with a short introduction about the film. See you then!

Address

36 Biltmore Avenue
Asheville, NC
28801

Opening Hours

Monday	12:30pm - 9pm
Tuesday	12:30pm - 9pm
Wednesday	12:30pm - 9pm
Thursday	12:30pm - 9pm
Friday	12:30pm - 11pm
Saturday	12:30pm - 11pm
Sunday	12:30pm - 9pm

Telephone

+18282321536

Website

http://www.fineartstheatre.com/

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