Clocking in at over seven hours, the film is less a movie and more an endurance test wrapped in avant-garde German expressionism. It's the kind of screening where you pack a lunch, question your life choices around hour four, and emerge blinking into the sunlight feeling like you've completed some kind of intellectual marathon.

To be fair, the film is widely regarded as a masterpiece — Susan Sontag once called it one of the great works of art of the twentieth century. It's a dense, theatrical exploration of how a society surrenders itself to authoritarianism, told through puppets, rear projections, and monologues that make Wagner operas feel brisk by comparison. The fact that it's been largely unavailable for years gives this screening genuine cultural significance.

And look, we're not here to knock anyone's film preferences. San Francisco has always been a city that takes its cinema seriously, and there's something admirable about a venue willing to dedicate an entire screening block to a challenging, uncommericial work when they could just run Barbie again.

But there's a broader point worth making: in a city where we struggle to keep basic services funded and functioning, our cultural institutions remain world-class at doing ambitious, impractical things. If only SFMTA brought this same energy to keeping the N-Judah on schedule.

If you're the kind of person who considers a seven-hour German art film about the nature of evil a good time — and honestly, no judgment — this is your moment. Just maybe bring a cushion.