![Celebrity Shoes at the ‘I Love Boosters’ Premiere: Keke Palmer, Lizzo and More [PHOTOS]](https://www.mogazmasr.com/uploads/2026/05/16/keke-palmer-61f5b7d0_800w.webp)
Boots Riley brought his new film I Love Boosters home for its West Coast premiere at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theatre, a place he said he has gone to since he was a kid and where the moment still feels personal. The filmmaker, whose sophomore feature follows Corvette, played by Keke Palmer, and her crew of stylish shoplifting women, said the screening was a treat at a theater he knows well.
“I’ve gone to since I was kid,” Riley said of Grand Lake Theatre, adding that he has seen “so many formative movies” there. After Sorry to Bother You did well at the venue, he said, “they gave me a lifetime pass to go there,” and that “I know everybody that works there.” The premiere came a few days before May Day, with the film set to open in theaters on May 22.
The stop in Oakland also marked the centerpiece of this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival, putting Riley’s latest work at the center of a busy spring run for one of the city’s best-known movie events. I Love Boosters follows the filmmaker’s 2018 directorial debut, Sorry to Bother You, and turns its lens on the fashion industry, where Riley said the film exposes layers of exploitation usually hidden inside the supply chain.
He has also made clear that he is not interested in making a straight message movie. The film mixes teleportation machines and demons into its story, and Riley said pointing out the problem is not enough. “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,” he said.
The cast includes Demi Moore as an oddball designer, and LaKeith Stanfield said the project would “push the art form forward.” He also said the film speaks to “this social issue that I think that we’re having trouble with, which is unity,” adding, “We have to challenge these structures above us,” because “we’re only going to be able to do it together.”
The film’s title traces back to 2006, when Riley’s hip-hop group the Coup released Pick a Bigger Weapon with the track “Boosters.” Two decades later, the name has moved from music into cinema, and Riley’s latest release is trying to do more than entertain. It is aiming to turn a critique of capitalism, fashion and power into something audiences will actually show up for.
