09/04/2026
Two special screenings of "I Love Boosters" with filmmaker Boots Riley in person:
1:30pm screening of "I Love Boosters"
(Boots Riley, 2026, 105 min, USA, English and Mandarin with English subtitles, DCP)
-- Panel Discussion to follow with writer/director Boots Riley, in conversation with Prof. Franklin Cason (Cinematic Arts/AAHVS), Prof. Michael Hardt (Literature), and Prof. Kathi Weeks (Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies)
7:00pm screening of "I Love Boosters"
-- Followed by Q&A with writer/director Boots Riley
Free parking for this event will be available in the Campus Drive Lot (across the street from the Rubenstein Arts Center, on Anderson St.)
Limited space available, seating will be first come, first served. Doors open 30 min. before show-time.
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ABOUT THE FILM:
booster (n.) — someone who illicitly procures goods from a store and sells them at a discount price
Within the aisles of the languishing department stores of Oakland, California, where the townspeople themselves can’t afford to step through the front doors, Corvette (Keke Palmer) has a scheme. She and her crew are entering these places, fly but broke, and skittering off with the loot: racks of high-fashion clothing made by the exalted designer Christie Smith (Demi Moore) that they’ll redistribute to the masses on the cheap. Call it community service.
Corvette wants to be like Christie, an artist who creates these beautiful and daring garments. But the closest she can get to Christie’s world is only in disguise, and never long enough to keep her feet planted on solid ground. So the alternative is simple: if you can’t access it, then steal it. But boosting through the Bay eventually leads Corvette on a consciousness-splitting adventure into new dimensions — and perhaps another way of seeing where she belongs in a bizarre world.
From the mad mind of Boots Riley (?Sorry to Bother You"; "I’m a Virgo") comes "I Love Boosters", an electric, mind-bending odyssey through the world of high-fashion and low-rent economies. An outrageously outré vision, Riley’s sophomore feature takes us from the malls of Oakland to the factories of China, as Corvette and her fellow boosters, Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige), steal their way into a surrealist fantasia that confirms the auteur as an utterly singular voice in contemporary cinema. Provided courtesy of Neon. Rated R.
"Bursting with eye-popping visuals and razor-sharp social commentary, I LOVE BOOSTERS is a brash, hilarious, and wholly unexpected joyride of friendship and style." -- Jessie Fairbanks, SIFF
"The film is as stylish as it is humorous and radical. And ultimately, [director Boots Riley] hopes it sparks something beyond the screen: 'I want you to engage with it as a piece of art and come to some conclusions, and hopefully it inspires you to go out and help make a mass, militant, radical labor movement… We need to try to get control of the wealth we have created with our labor.'" -- Jessica Herndon, Sundance Institute
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ABOUT THE FILMMAKER:
"Boots Riley is a walking contradiction like bullets and love mixin. Slurs his words with perfect diction, he's guilty of his convictions. Complicated compositions, punctuated propositions, it's tenacious two-stops, cinema with ambition. Make you rev your transmission, in the intersection twistin - when the Henny hits the ground, sidewalks will be christened. He's so nervous and sweaty, that the g*t might slip out his hand. A homeless dude need a tip in his can (he put his bid in this, man. Now it's just bitterness, man). We need a bid-ness plan [a plan on how to change our economic system] , he's not just spittin at fans. When he's runnin from the police, he don't have to rush - he's so dope he just jumps in the toilet and flush. We cut it, boil it and hush, aluminum foil it and such - tryin to catch the few bucks, the big boys didn't clutch. We use the tweezers for crutch, when we done burned down the dutch, but when they Starsky & Hutch, we just s**t out of luck."
Boots Riley is a rapper, songwriter, record producer, filmmaker, and activist whose work operates at the intersection of art and radical politics. Riley studied film at San Francisco State University before gaining recognition as the frontman of hip-hop groups The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club. Vibe Magazine named Riley one of the 10 most influential people of the year.
Riley's activism is central to his identity. In the same year he co-founded The Coup, he and other activists and hip-hop artists created the Mau Mau Rhythm Collective, which organized Hip-Hop Edutainment Concerts in alliance with community-based organizations such as Women's Economic Agenda Project, Copwatch, the Black Panther Alumni Association, and various anti-police brutality projects. Riley was involved with the Occupy Oakland movement and was a leader of the activist group The Young Comrades.
Riley made his directorial debut with the film SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, an American science fiction black comedy that he wrote and directed. Riley described the film as "an absurdist dark comedy with aspects of magical realism and science fiction inspired by the world of telemarketing," drawing from his own experiences. The feature premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was acquired by Annapurna Pictures, and achieved box office success and critical acclaim. At the Independent Spirit Awards, Riley won the Best First Feature Award for Sorry to Bother You and received SFFILM's Kanbar Award.
Riley followed his feature debut by creating the television series I'M A VIRGO, a seven-episode surrealist comedy that premiered at South by Southwest and was released on Amazon Prime Video. I'M A VIRGO was nominated for a Gotham Award and four Independent Spirit Awards.
Riley also wrote and directed I LOVE BOOSTERS, a crime comedy starring Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Don Cheadle, and Demi Moore, which premiered at the South by Southwest Film & TV Festival and was released theatrically in the United States by Neon.
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Sponsored by Duke Cinematic Arts, Experimental Film Lab at Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke UniversityHI, Dept. of Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans Foundation.
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Event URL:
1:30pm screening:
https://cinematicarts.duke.edu/screensociety/screenings/i-love-boosters-2026-panel-discussion-w-dir-boots-riley
7pm screening: https://cinematicarts.duke.edu/screensociety/screenings/i-love-boosters-2026-qa-w-dir-boots-riley
View trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1xZegSgN8w
Screen/Society screenings are free and open to the public.
Parking Info: https://artscenter.duke.edu/parking
