What defines a “cult film”? Where once the phrase referred to something specific – a movie often with a low-budget, always with a small but devoted audience and bereft of mainstream appeal – now it’s used promiscuously: a modern “cult movie” seems to be any film that people really enjoyed but that doesn’t star Spider-Man. (The moniker was even applied to, say, Everything Everywhere All at Once – which made nearly $150m at the box office and swept the Oscars.) When filmmaker Matt Johnson, however, describes Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie as a “cult movie”, just know: he really does mean it?

The film, out in UK cinemas this week, is a loose followup to a TV series, Nirvanna the Band the Show, itself a niche but adored comedy following two harebrained musicians (Johnson and co-creator Jay McCarrol) and their sisyphean attempts to perform at The Rivoli, a Toronto music venue of only minor renown. The film, though, is a different beast – a madcap, stunt-filled Back to the Future spoof, shot largely Borat-style, safaried amid unwitting members of the public. It’s been a huge hit with most everyone who’s seen it; on the increasingly influential film platform Letterboxd, it ranks as the second highest-rated narrative film of 2026. “For it to all of a sudden get this kind of attention has been quite mindboggling,” Johnson tells me, over Zoom. “Mostly because we’ve been making this exact thing for 20 years.”

Johnson and McCarrol sit next to each other on the sofa; Johnson wearing a red headband, McCarrol a pink button-up shirt. As we talk, they’re signing merchandise for NTBTSTM (let’s abbreviate, or I’ll get finger sprain). They are, it seems, ready to shift a lot of material.

In the seven years since the original Nirvanna the Band series ended, the Canadian duo have gone from abject outsiders to something vaguely approaching the big leagues: Johnson directed and starred in the acclaimed 2024 comedy BlackBerry (sort of a funnier, more pathetic cousin of The Social Network, following the rise and fall of the pioneering smartphone company). McCarrol, mostly a musician when not doing Nirvanna the Band, composed the soundtrack. Meanwhile, Johnson’s buzzed-about next film, Tony, is his first American production, drawing on the early years of the late chef Anthony Bourdain. It sees him work with a cast that includes The Holdovers’ Dominic Sessa, Antonio Banderas, and Leo Woodall. (McCarrol again does the music.)

Ostensibly then, NTSTBTM was something of an unusual detour for a filmmaker on the up – a regression to a process that’s scrappy and DIY. It had a budget of just $2m – provided courtesy of the Canadian government, as a “thank you” for the success of BlackBerry. Shooting on the streets of Toronto, Johnson and McCarrol used members of the public as unwitting co-stars, steering conversations to try and “harvest” the right sort of reactions. “The biggest problem,” says Johnson, “is how do you shoot without people knowing you’re shooting?

“The cinematographers have a much harder job than we do,” ” he explains. “For them, it’s basically combat photography – not only do they need to get the scene, but they need to do it [secretly].
And it’s happening in public, in front of witnesses who we are desperately trying to convince that we are not filming something. It’s like every single scene is an Ocean’s Eleven.” It was, adds McCarrol, a constant game of asking “is there somebody with a name tag or a blazer to come over and tell us that police are on their way?”

There are several scenes in NTBTSTM that seem to beg the question “how on earth didn’t police get involved?” – one of which involves smuggling parachuting equipment into a Toronto landmark. (“Smuggling” might be overselling it: incredibly, their huge, hunched, parachute-concealing backs are unremarked upon by security.) “We have encounters with police all the time,” admits Johnson, “and 99.999 per cent of them are extremely friendly. They’re normally trying to help us, as insane as that sounds. There’s been one time that our entire team was detained, on the verge of being arrested – and even that didn’t go that bad.” “That de-escalated to the point where they were friends by the end,” adds McCarrol.

“You’ve got to remember, we’re also Canadian,” says Johnson. “We’re living in the capital of the country, making movies about our country – and we’re sincere in our mission of showing Canadians on screen. It’s not a prank show. It’s not Borat, where we’ve gone to America to expose the latent racism and antisemitism. And because it’s a sincere mission, I think we’ve been blessed with very, very soft gloves when authorities are dealing with us. Even if they have no idea who we are.”

It’s apparent, talking to Johnson, just how gossamer-thin the divide is between creator and character: he talks intensely, with an enthusiasm that’s both involved and endearing. McCarrol’s character is quieter – the emotional arc of the film essentially follows his quest to break free of his overbearing partner – and he is the slightly more taciturn of the pair here too. He’s shrewd, though, particularly when he gets into the technical aspects of the music. (In case you were wondering, the key to mimicking the sound of Eighties adventure films is, he says, all in “the power of the Octatonic scale”.)

This is, I suppose, the tail end of the NTBTSTM hype train (the film arrives in the UK nearly half a year after coming out in the US). It’s remarkable just how much the film is still talked about in certain comedy-centric corners of the internet – fuelled in part by Johnson and McCarol’s relentless participation in Q&As and screenings (and, I suppose, interviews like these). “Me and Jay hear this a lot – that it seems we had a certain kind of algorithmic domination over a certain collection of the population. We have no explanation,” says Johnson.

“And we had no internal strategy whatsoever. We don’t know anything about releasing movies. We don’t know anything about marketing. We just did what [the film’s distribution company] Neon told us to do. Also, let’s look at the box office. We’re no Obsession or Backrooms by any stretch.”

Perhaps, though, there are more deep-rooted reasons for NTBTSTM’s resonance. “I wonder if the archetypes that Jay and I play – children presenting to be adults – is just extremely relevant right now,” Johnson continues. “So many people spend all their time indoors; there’s a global shyness epidemic. I’ve heard somebody say the biggest thrill of watching Nirvanna the Band is how much we talk to strangers.”

This may be true – although the gloriously committed Back to the Future schtick probably also has something to do with it. “If I could give ourselves a pat on the back,” says McCarrol, “all the low-fi, zany, almost internet-quality humour in this, we put that – successfully and with a lot of effort – into the shell of a movie, one that felt like the ‘movie experience’ you’re conditioned to experience in the theatre.

“When you combine that low-fi aesthetic, and Matt and I’s dynamic… We’re not movie stars, but somehow, by the end… you feel like you watched a real movie.”

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie’ is in cinemas from 3 July, with previews on Canada Day (1 July)