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.

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.

GENRE | 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 iconoclastic sophomore filmmaker Boots Riley brings his visionary 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.

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.

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.

SCREEN | John Magaro Drives Across Nebraska – 'Omaha'

"I think we're moving."

Greenwich Entertainment / Vortex Media

Accomplished character actor John Magaro stars as a struggling single father in Utah filmmaker Cole Webley's Midwest family road trip indie drama, Omaha, also his directorial debut. It's a slow but patient indie drama scripted by Robert Machoian that revolves around two children (Molly Belle Wright and Wyatt Solis) and their perspectives on what might really be going on in their family unit.

REEL | Anne Hathaway Suddenly Sees 'The Devil Wears Prada 2'

"Stockholm called. It wants its syndrome back."

20th Century Studios

The fashionable duo of Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep reunite for The Devil Wears Prada 2, the fashion magazine comedy sequel to the highly rewatchable 2006 literary adaptation about bad bosses, toxic workplaces, and career sacrifices with a decidedly female focus. Twenty years later, much has changed as we explore the contemporary problems of running a once-glamorous and powerful global print brand with humour and plenty of style.

GENRE | Anne Hathaway Hails 'Mother Mary' – A Pop Nightmare

"Catch me by surprise with your sincerity."

A24 / VVS Films

Eclectic filmmaker David Lowery writes and directs the gothic pop-horror music psychodrama, Mother Mary, starring Anne Hathaway as an iconic singer (think Lady Gaga meets Taylor Swift) in search of a new stage costume from her estranged former collaborator (Michaela Coel). It's an all-female, two-hander chamber piece of ghostly confrontation that doubles for the complications of artistic and creative partnerships.