I Love Boosters is a must-see film of 2026 for those who like female anti-capitalist heroes fighting and beating billionaire bosses. Written and directed by Boots Riley, Bay Area communist activist and creator of the 2018 hit Sorry to Bother You, the film uses magical surrealism to show embattled workers coming together to fight global corporate greed. Riley’s feminist filmmaking deserves way more attention than it gets.
In August, he and I briefly connected at a demonstration outside the Superior Courthouse in Richmond in defense of the Crockett 10, union and community activists who were unjustly arrested on the picket line supporting the C&H Sugar factory strike. Boots spoke to the crowd about how a strike makes a bigger impact against the bosses than a protest does. Afterwards, I said, “Boots, ‘Sorry to Bother You’ but ‘I Love Boosters!’ ” (Couldn’t resist!) And when I told him I was writing this review focusing on the revolutionary feminist point of the need for women of color leadership, he nodded and agreed.
Many good reviews have been written about I Love Boosters but none have hit the mark on the necessity of revolutionary feminists of color leadership in taking down the bosses.
In this film, the protagonist Corvette and her women of color cohorts, the Velvet Gang, are professional shoplifters who steal from rich fashion designer Christie Smith and sell her designs at a discount. As the story unfolds, they join up with Chinese activist Jianhu, and the miserably oppressed workers at the Metro Designers overseas factory, as well as other U.S. employees. Ultimately, they spark a global strike which halts production and forces their demands to be met and triumphant solidarity to reign.
Clearly, the leadership of women of color is at the forefront of this story; from the employees at Metro Designers in the U.S. to the workers in China who make the clothes.
An important theme is the role of the “skinless” people, who are Black middle-caste, petty bourgeois intermediaries hired as influencers to sell bourgeois ideas to the working class. Selling not only their clothes, but their very skins to shill for the capitalists, they argue against rent control, protests and unions.
The lessons are abundant. Technology in the hands of working-class women, rather than capitalists, is good. The overarching theme is that international, multi-racial, working-class feminist solidarity terrifies and cows the big bosses into global submission.
Get inspired by the Velvet Gang, Jianhu, and others who face satirical obstacles from an abandoned fast-food joint they squat in to a horrifying giant ball of bills trying to run them down. I Love Boosters is beautifully orchestrated in monochromatic colors in the mythical yet grounded backdrop that is the city of Oakland.
Norma Gallegos is a Queer Chicana tradeswoman born and raised in San Francisco. Send comments to FSnews@socialism.com.
