South by Southwest (SXSW) is getting ready for 2026 and has announced one of its most important lineup details: the opening night film. I Love Boosters, featuring an ensemble cast, will open the 2026 Film & TV Festival with its world premiere March 12. The rest of the film festival runs through March 18.

I Love Boosters is directed by filmmaker Boots Riley, who is also known for the 2018 film Sorry to Bother You and the 2023 series I'm a Virgo. The big and buzzy cast features Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Poppy Liu, Eiza Gonzalez, LaKeith Stanfield, Don Cheadle, and Demi Moore.

According to a press release, audiences can expect a "mind-bending story" about a group of professional shoplifters, the Velvet Gang, who set their sights on a ruthless "fashion maven." The release remains as vague as possible: "Revealing any more than that would do a disservice to the SXSW opening night crowd..."

This is only Riley's second original feature film. He first became known in music, playing with The Coup and the Street Sweeper Social Club with Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello. His first film, which also starred LaKeith Stanfield, was met with notably good reviews. Writing for RogerEbert.com, Brian Tallerico called it "an adrenalin-shot of a comedy and a fearless dissection of identity politics, corporate malevolence, and the American tendency to look the other way when confronted with horror."

Of course, opening night films can be hard to get into, but technically anyone with a Film & TV or Platinum Badge ($825 and $1,495, respectively) can attend if they commit early enough. There will also be an opening party that both types of badgeholders are invited to attend. Badges are available now at sxsw.com.

"Boots has created another wildly original and boundary-pushing vision that's deliciously unpredictable," said Film & TV VP Claudette Godfrey in the release. "We can’t wait for our audience to be sucked into his singular, subversive world where razor-sharp social commentary meets fearless, surreal storytelling and eye-popping imagery—all powered by a ridiculously stacked cast of some of the most talented actors on the planet."

It sounds like I Love Boosters — if it is as unique as they say — may follow a similar trajectory to the cult hit Everything Everywhere All At Once, which famously premiered at the festival in 2022 and later won seven Oscars. The opening film in 2025 was Another Simple Favor, a somewhat unenthusiastically received effort that was blunted by lawsuits involving co-star Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, who worked together on another film around the same time.

I Love Boosters already has a distribution deal set up, and will hit theaters May 22, 2026.