Boots Riley is back in the directors' chair for the brand new absurdist comedy I Love Boosters.
While already released in the US, film fans in the UK will soon be immersed into the world of boosting next Friday 30 October.
As the movie begins you find yourself dropped into the sometimes glamorous and always chaotic world of Corvette (Keke Palmer) who, along with her crew Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige) loot the Metro Designer department stores made by designer Christie Smith (Demi Moore), before redistributing to the local community for far cheaper than anyone would find on the sales racks.
But soon, you are transported from the malls of Oakland to the factories of China, where the Metro Designer clothes are made by labourers who are suffering from exploitative working conditions.
The film quickly takes everyone inside the screen on an adventure with an absurdist construction of its world, immediately pulling the rug out from under viewers.
View Green Video on the source website"The movie is called I Love Boosters, right? So we are supposed to love them, right? And hopefully through getting to know them and knowing what they're worried about, knowing what they hope for, we start doing that and just experiencing that with them," Riley told Radio Times.
He continued: "And what I'm usually trying to do, with cinema, I'm trying to create visceral experiences that are analogous to what our characters are going through. So when there's a point when she's shocked about one thing, and we're pushing back with her and the rows of clothes are moving behind her, and it goes from one scene to the next and everything is blended together.
"I want us to feel something from that, something physically almost and that matches with that. And so that's [where] the pulling the rug comes with those things. I want it to feel like life, how you don't know what's coming around the corner."
The director described that in his filmmaking he tries to "feel it out" as opposed to following the script line by line.
He added: "I want it to be like, 'Okay, I have an idea of what's happening already', but I just kind of try to feel it in my body because I think so much of film has been reduced to numbers and like, 'Oh, this is what makes people go, this is what makes them not,' and as being an artist that's been doing stuff for decades, I want to use that and use that instinct I have."
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While I Love Boosters is certainly a comedy, it works as a direct conversation around class struggle - something Riley admits to in his filmmaking.
"I think that's just how I think. When I think about contradictions and stuff, the way you might talk about it is very comedic. I also think that comedy is throughout life," he told Radio Times. "To make something that's just this dry drama, you have to subtract comedy from the way things are, right?"
Riley continued: "So how a lot of things might turn into a joke. So like a bad joke might be, you know, 'Well, I work at the shoe factory, but I've had to work for three years before I could afford one pair of shoes,' right? So there's a way to talk about that that is just the sad thing, but there's a way to condense that contradiction to something that sounds funny and flippant in the way that we all might experience or talk about the world."
I Love Boosters will be released in UK cinemas on Friday 30 October.
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