What happened in this Culture story?

San Francisco is getting its first new movie theater in more than a decade — The Portal Cinema, a nonprofit single-screen venue opening this fall in the Mission District with 35mm/16mm archive capability and awards-season programming.

What is a key fact in this story? (1)

**The Portal Cinema** will open at 3293 Mission Street in SF's Mission District this fall, making it the first new movie theater built in San Francisco in more than a decade, according to its backers.

What is a key fact in this story? (2)

**Founder Nellie Killian**, an SF native returning after two decades in New York, previously programmed at Brooklyn's BAM, Lower Manhattan's Metrograph, the Criterion Channel, the British Film Institute, and Queens' Museum of the Moving Image.

SF Gets Its First New Movie Theater in Over a Decade — SkimNews

By IndieWire · Summarized & edited by Kapil Samant · 2026-08-20

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The Portal Cinema will open at 3293 Mission Street in SF's Mission District this fall, making it the first new movie theater built in San Francisco in more than a decade, according to its backers.
Founder Nellie Killian, an SF native returning after two decades in New York, previously programmed at Brooklyn's BAM, Lower Manhattan's Metrograph, the Criterion Channel, the British Film Institute, and Queens' Museum of the Moving Image.
A Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign has launched with a $250,000 goal to fund an electrical panel upgrade, 35mm projection, and a 5.1 sound system so the theater can open at full capacity.
The single-screen nonprofit venue will showcase new global releases, repertory works, and special programs, equipped to screen archive-only 35mm and 16mm prints alongside digital formats.
The Portal will host private press and tastemaker screenings plus awards-season showings and receptions — a deliberate fit for the Bay Area's third-largest U.S. concentration of Academy members and film professionals, behind only New York and Los Angeles.
SF's recent theater losses include the Landmark-owned Embarcadero Center complex shuttering in 2023 and AMC taking over the indie Sundance Kabuki in Japantown a decade ago; the Castro Theatre reopened as a movie palace this year after nearly being converted into a live event space.

Why it matters: The Portal arrives after 15 years of theater attrition in San Francisco, including the 2023 Embarcadero Center closure, and carves a distinct niche with archive 35mm/16mm capability plus awards-season programming aimed at the Bay Area's third-largest U.S. concentration of Academy members. Its $250,000 Kickstarter target underscores that the gap left by chain closures is being filled by lean nonprofit capital rather than commercial development — a small but symbolically meaningful reversal of the city's decade-long slide.