Cinema Soirée 2026

Al Roker is the weather and feature anchor of NBC News’ TODAY as well as a co-host of TODAY. Roker served as co-host of the morning show “Wake Up with Al” on the Weather Channel. Until January 2000, he also served as the weekday weather forecaster for News Channel 4’s early evening newscast Live at 5 on WNBC-TV. Roker came to WNBC-TV as a weekend weathercaster in December 1983 from Cleveland. Roker has been named Best Weatherman twice by New York Magazine, has won three Daytime Emmy Awards, co-hosts Sirius XM’s “Off the Rails” with Dylan Dreyer and Sheinelle Jones and hosts “Cold Cuts with Al Roker” on Today.com and YouTube. He made his Broadway stage debut in Waitress in October 2018 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in New York City. Among many highlights of his career as an interviewer, Roker interviewed Peanuts creator Charles Shultz, as well as Willie Nelson, Burt Reynolds, and James Earl Jones. Roker also co-hosts the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Rose Bowl Parade. For ten years, Roker’s “Lend a Hand Today” initiative took him across the country and raised millions to help small charities work towards improving conditions in their communities. He is also a bestselling author with 13 acclaimed books.

Kelly O’Sullivan is writer, director, and actor originally from North Little Rock, Arkansas. Saint Frances, which premiered at SXSW and won the Audience Award and Special Jury Prize for Breakthrough Voice in 2019, was her first screenplay. She was nominated for a Gotham Breakthrough Actor Award for her role in Saint Frances and the Independent Spirit Cassavetes Award. She was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film”, and was part of Film at Lincoln Center’s 2019 Artist Academy. Her second feature film, Ghostlight, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024 and was named one of the Top 10 Best Independent Films by the National Board of Review, is on Hulu now after a theatrical release, distributed by IFC Films. The film was nominated for both Gotham and Independent Spirit Awards. She co-directed two upcoming films, Mouse and The Steel Harp, with partner Alex Thompson, and wrote the screenplays for both.

Alex Thompson is an Illinois-based, Kentucky-born film director, producer, and screenwriter. He directed and produced Saint Frances (2019), which won the Audience and Special Jury Award at the 2019 SXSW Film Festival. His sophomore feature, Rounding, premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and was recently distributed by Music Box Films. He produced and co-directed Ghostlight, which opened the Sundance Film Festival in 2024 and was named one of the Top 10 Best Independent Films by the National Board of Review. He was nominated for the Bingham Ray breakthrough director prize at the Gotham Awards in 2020 and is a two-time nominee of the Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards. He co-directed two upcoming films, Mouse and The Steel Harp, with partner Kelly O’Sullivan.