A few days before May Day—International Worker’s Day—I traveled to Oakland’s Grand Lake Theatre for the West Coast premiere of activist-writer-director Boots Riley’s sophomore film, I Love Boosters. The 100-year-old movie palace—which was one of many businesses across the country closed on May Day in support of workers’ rights—seemed a fitting place for Riley’s star-studded satire to debut.

As the centerpiece of this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival, at which Riley also made his directorial debut in 2018 with Sorry to Bother You, it was a packed house, with a long line of prospective popcorn munchers outside the venue hoping to cop a last-minute ticket. Like Riley’s first film, Boosters—also the title of a track on Pick a Bigger Weapon, a 2006 album by Riley’s hip-hop group the Coup—is an incisive critique of capitalism set in the Bay Area.

This time, Riley turns his lens on the fashion industry, zooming out through the supply chain to reveal the layers of exploitation usually rendered invisible. The film follows Corvette (Keke Palmer) and her gaggle of stylish, shoplifting women, or boosters, feuding with an oddball designer played by Demi Moore. And in typical Boots Riley fashion, it’s jam-packed with surrealist, sci-fi, and even supernatural elements like teleportation machines and demons. Plus some good old Marxist philosophy.

“Pointing out the problem is not enough, although I might enjoy those movies…we need something that makes people want to join a movement that can win.”

After the credits rolled, Riley and cast members Eiza González, Poppy Liu, and LaKeith Stanfield took the stage, and began fielding questions from a moderator. Asked what he thought when he first read the script, and what made him excited to be a part of the project, Stanfield said that he knew Boosters would “push the art form forward” and allow him and the rest of the film crew to speak to “this social issue that I think that we’re having trouble with, which is unity.”

“We have to challenge these structures above us,” he said, “and we’re only going to be able to do it together.”

The next day, while walking through downtown San Francisco to interview Riley in person, I watched a small plane cruise above the skyscrapers, dragging a banner through the cloudless sky that read, “STOP HIRING HUMANS.” It would have fit perfectly into one of Riley’s cartoonishly dystopian worlds—which is perhaps why his films resonate so much in our late-stage capitalist hellscape. Shortly after, I sat down with the filmmaker to discuss his inspirations, his thoughts on the state of socially conscious films, and I Love Boosters, in theatres on May 22.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What was it like being back at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theatre for the premiere of your sophomore film?

Well, Grand Lake Theatre, I’ve gone to since I was kid. [I] saw so many formative movies there. And since I did Sorry to Bother You, and they did so well with it, they gave me a lifetime pass to go there. So I go there all the time. I know everybody that works there. But just showing it in Oakland as well, it’s a real treat.

That’s amazing. I know that you encountered some obstacles in producing Sorry to Bother You. I wonder, after the massive commercial success of that,........

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