Photo credit: West End Cinema

This is quite a bummer for local cinephiles: West End Cinema, the small, scrappy arthouse theater with terrific popcorn, is closing at the end of the month.

The Post first reported the news, with owner Josh Levin saying that the theater was “treading water financially,” and that they “[h]ave looming significant increases in our occupancy costs that [they] simply can’t cover from operations.” Though West End Cinema primarily programmed indies, documentaries, foreign films, and other one-off series, the theater relied on being able to get more mainstream films, especially during awards season:

A crucial factor in the West End’s business model was being able to get more mainstream films at the height of their awards-season campaigns; recently, however, bigger theater chains in the area have demanded that they get sole access to those titles, effectively shutting the West End out of their main revenue stream. Whereas in the past Levin could play such Oscar contenders as “Argo” and “The Wolf of Wall Street,” this year he had no such high-profile titles. “Without those better-known, more prestigious films during the holidays and awards season, the economic model for my theater no longer makes sense.”

West End Cinema’s current programming will end on March 26, and it’s some great programming: a bunch of Oscar winners, including Whiplash, The Theory of Everything, and Citizenfour; the foreign critical darling Girlhood, and beginning this Friday, a 40th anniversary run of one of the greatest documentaries of all time, Grey Gardens.

DCist reached out to Levin for more information about West End’s closing and will update when we hear back.