Just four years ago, after coming back to school from Christmas break, Kane Parsons was sitting in Philip Chidel’s classroom at Marin School of the Arts in Novato, showing the class his latest personal project on YouTube: The Backrooms (Found Footage).
Fast-forward to 2026, and the 20-year-old, Petaluma-raised director has broken multiple box office records, with his feature-film debut Backrooms boasting an $81 million domestic opening weekend. Globally, his film earned a whopping $118 million.
Chidel, Parsons’s film teacher from fall of 2019 through spring of 2022, first met Parsons at an interview for his film program at Marin School for the Arts (MSA) when he was still in eighth grade…