If the visions that come to us in the dead of night—the ones we’d most like to forget and shove violently back into our subconscious—had a cinematic patron saint, it would be David Lynch. In his latest, Inland Empire, the director continues to mine familiar territory: shifting notions of the self and identity, sexual violence, surrealist dream logic, and scaring us in the places in our minds we prefer not to acknowledge. Unfortunately, even with Lynch’s pedigree, distribution for a three-hour film that doesn’t feature hobbits can be hard enough to come by. When you throw in the fact that most audiences will find the film to be incomprehensible nonsense, the task is nearly impossible. So Lynch is continuing in the DIY tradition that has always been integral to his most difficult work, and is distributing the movie himself, in an extremely limited and targeted fashion. When it arrives at the AFI Silver Theater this week for a special one-week engagement, it may be your only opportunity to see the movie on a big screen.

Lynch himself will also be coming to town this weekend, to introduce Sunday evening’s screening, and to conduct a Q&A afterwards. Unfortunately, if you’re not already lucky enough to have a ticket to this event, then you probably won’t get one: it’s already sold out. There is potential solace for Lynchophiles who may be staring longingly at the Silver’s marquee, ticketless, come Sunday evening. The theatre will be videotaping the Q&A, and while they haven’t decided if or how they will broadcast the footage, it’s a distinct possibility.

But what to expect from Inland Empire?