Annual Top Films Lists

Top 100 Most Anticipated American Indie Films of 2018: #49. Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You

Published on January 17, 2018

Sorry to Bother You

The moment hip hop artist Boots Riley took Sorry to Bother You to the Sundance labs (2015 June Screenwriters Lab and 2016 Directors Lab) it was jettisoned into a feature film with no time to waste. A filmmaking debut landed a crazy producing team (Nina Yang Bongiovi and Forest Whitaker, Jonathan Duffy and Kelly Williams, Charles D. King and George Rush) and all the elements were then put into place for a dream ensemble with production taking place in Oakland, California at the midway mark last year.

With Lakeith Stanfield, Armie Hammer, Tessa Thompson, Steven Yeun, Jermaine Fowler, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, David Cross, Patton Oswalt, Kate Berlant and Robert Longstreet, this is about a black telemarketer (Stanfield) with self-esteem issues discovers a magical key to business success, propelling him to the upper echelons of the hierarchy just as his activist comrades are rising up against unjust labor practices. When he uncovers the macabre secret of his corporate overlords, he must decide whether to stand up or sell out. We know the soundtrack will be solid and all the elements are there, but on paper, this sounds dope.

Release Date/Prediction: This was selected for the U.S. Dramatic Comp at the Sundance Film Festival.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).