GENRE | 'Backrooms' Finds A Psychological Horror Detour

"It's every place that ever was."

A24 / Elevation Pictures

Twenty-year-old YouTuber and visual effects artist Kane "Pixels" Parsons turns his nightmarish creepypasta web series of the same name into a full-fledged psychological horror feature. Filmed in Vancouver, the basic premise revolves around a mysteriously elaborate but oddly abandoned series of secret "backrooms" found beneath a suburban furniture warehouse located in a generic strip mall somewhere in 1990s middle America.

CABLE | Nicolas Cage Investigates 'Spider-Noir' on Prime Video

"You'd be surprised at how much people will fight for what little they have."

Sony Pictures Television / Amazon MGM Studios

Spider-Noir, the live-action television adaptation of Spider-Man Noir, the 2009 Marvel Comics alternate-universe spin-off webslinger character most widely seen in the Oscar-winning animated film, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and famously voiced by Nicolas Cage, who reprises his role in the flesh this time, is a fun throwback to the hard-boiled detective film genre. Developed by Oren Uziel (with Steve Lightfoot serving as co-showrunner) and executive produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the television series overtly but lovingly leans heavily into classic film noir influences.

GATHER | Web Summit Vancouver 2026 x Global Tech Conference

"We meet at a critical moment in the history of technology."

Physician/author Dr. Gabor Maté and Twitch political streamer Hasan Piker

Waterfront—(May 11 to 14, 2026) For the second year, Web Summit Vancouver's annual multi-day global conference, known as the "Olympics of Tech," gathered 20,235 attendees (up from 15,727 in 2025) spread across three levels of the Vancouver Convention Centre, once again hosted by the titular Dublin-based technology events company.

REEL | Tony Leung Makes A 'Silent Friend' x SIFF 2026

"I want to find out what plants sense."

1-2 Special / Films We Like

Silent Friend (aka Stille Freundin), a strange but affecting historical tale by visionary Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi, follows Hong Kong superstar Tony Leung as a Chinese neuroscientist studying a beguiling gingko tree on the grounds of a medieval German university town in 2020. It's a uniquely engrossing two-and-a-half-hour film essentially about a professor befriending an old tree through science.

REEL | 'The Mandalorian and Grogu' Forges Another 'Star Wars' Way

"We'll take out every bad guy in your deck of cards."

Lucasfilm / Fairview Entertainment

The Mandalorian creator, actor/director Jon Favreau, takes his flagship Star Wars series to the big screen in The Mandalorian and Grogu. Pedro Pascal's titular veteran bounty hunter, named Din Djarin, alongside his adorable puppet sidekick orphan alien (aka "Baby Yoda"), is tasked with another basic but extended intergalactic side mission very much in the vein of the popular, heavily Western-influenced television show set after Return of the Jedi.

REEL | Keke Palmer Shoplifts 'I Love Boosters' x SIFF 2026

"Now's not the time for nuance!"

Neon / Elevation Pictures

Oakland-based The Coup rapper turned sophomore filmmaker Boots Riley brings his imaginiative tastes back to the big screen in I Love Boosters, a radically anti-capitalist heist comedy screed (complimentary) about a crew of professional female African-American activist shoplifters, dubbed the "Velvet Gang" (Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, and Taylour Paige), in the East Bay that target the designer clothing made by a cutthroat but monochromatic fashion maven played by Demi Moore.

GENRE | 'Obsession' Makes One Wish Willow x SIFF 2026

"It's weird how you two are dating all of a sudden."

Focus Features / Blumhouse Productions

Profilic 25-year-old That's A Bad Idea YouTuber Curry Barker, hailing from Mobile, Alabama, makes his proper theatrical feature debut as an independent filmmaker with a deceptively simple yet twisted supernatural horror romance, Obsession. Essentially a "be careful what you wish for" monkey's paw-type parable, insecure music shop employee Bear (Michael Johnston) wishes for his co-worker and childhood friend (Inde Navarrette) to fall madly in love with him. You get the idea where this is going. Her unnatural love turns into a violent, well, "obsession," rather quickly. Terror ensues.

SCREEN | Glaciers and Memories – 'Time and Water' x DOXA 2026

"I cannot send you a glacier."

National Geographic Documentary Films / Sandbox Films

Oscar-nominated Fire of Love director Sara Dosa explores the environmental impact of melting glaciers through renowned, award-winning Icelandic poet/author Andri Snær Magnason's comprehensive family history in their documentary, Time and Water (see also his book, On Time and Water). It's an elegiac portrait of time passing told side-by-side with the Earth's "memories" as climate change ravages the glacial natural wonders.

SCREEN | Swimming Past 'Numakage Public Pool' x DOXA 2026

"Once the pool is gone, it'll be too late."

Hydroblast

Numakage Public Pool, director Shingo Ōta's peaceful eighty-minute observational documentary chronicling the eponymous landlocked suburban Tokyo public swimming pool complex's final months of operations, details the much-loved location through its ten-thousand daily patrons, from the elderly, families, and children, as they fight to keep it open against looming urban development.