Wil Aime turned theater and mathematics training into WHO, his first feature film, a psychological thriller now streaming on Disney+ in 75 territories.
Most feature films take a village to finance and a marketing budget to launch. Wil Aime's first one had neither, at least not in the traditional sense. What it had instead was seven years of an audience built one video at a time, on Instagram and TikTok, long before a single frame of WHO: The Monster Hides in the Details was shot.
That distinction matters more than it might seem. Aime, trained in mathematics and theater, spent years building a following through sketches, interviews, and the kind of sharp, controlled short-form content that made him one of the most recognizable young creators in the French-speaking world. When he announced he was making the leap to cinema, the audience did not need convincing. They had already been watching him build toward it.
A Theater Kid's Long Game
It would be easy to describe Aime's path as an overnight jump from web videos to the big screen. It was not. The discipline that shapes WHO, a psychological thriller about characters pushed to their breaking point by chance, belief, instinct, and authority, is the same discipline that shaped his early content: tight editing, patient pacing, and a refusal to give an audience anything less than a complete idea. The film, written and directed by Aime himself, stars Roselyne Geslot, Hassan Kone, John Dadie, Eden Elijah, Ike Zacsongo, and Philippe Kande, an ensemble built to carry a story about the price of every decision.
What reads on screen as confidence took years of a much quieter kind of work: showing up consistently, refining a voice, and treating an Instagram following not as a vanity number but as an audience being trained to trust a storyteller.
From Cinéma Beaubien to the Grand Rex
The rollout for WHO reads like a study in how a creator-led release can move at a completely different pace than a traditional studio picture. A launch night presented by Hennessy at Montreal's Cinéma Beaubien. A trailer drop with ticket sales opening the following Monday. A trip to Paris for a milestone screening at the Grand Rex, seven years after Aime first started posting online. A UK premiere at London's Ciné Lumière. Each stop functioned less like a press stop and more like a community gathering, filmed and shared the same way Aime has always shared everything else.
Then came the wider release. WHO opened in theaters and arrived on Disney+ within weeks of each other, and by late June had expanded across Disney+ in 75 territories spanning Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. For a first feature with no studio pedigree behind its director, that is not a modest result. It is the kind of distribution a built-in audience can unlock when a platform sees the following as part of the value of the film itself.
View Wil Aime's Disney+ announcement for WHO on Instagram
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| May 2, 2026 | Official trailer released, ticket sales open the following Monday |
| May 20, 2026 | Disney+ release confirmed for May 30 |
| May 25, 2026 | Milestone screening at the Grand Rex, Paris |
| June 1, 2026 | Launch night presented by Hennessy at Cinéma Beaubien, Montreal |
| June 7, 2026 | UK premiere at Ciné Lumière, London |
| June 23, 2026 | Disney+ expansion to 75 territories across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa |
Why WHO Matters Beyond the Box Office
For the brands and platforms paying attention, Aime's trajectory is a preview of where entertainment value is migrating. A creator who has already proven they can hold an audience's attention for years is a lower-risk bet than an unknown quantity, and the audience that follows them into a theater or onto a streaming platform arrives pre-sold on the storyteller before they have seen a single scene. It is the same logic reshaping how brands think about influencer marketing more broadly: reach built on trust outlasts reach rented for a single campaign.
It is a pattern worth watching alongside the rest of Quebec's most closely followed content creators, and it echoes what we have seen with other One Way talent making the jump from platform to industry, including Stevens Dorcelus's own transition from athlete to sought-after creator. The through line is the same: an audience built with patience becomes a business asset that outlasts any single post, film, or campaign.
Seven years ago, Aime posted a single video and said he would update his bio from time to time. He has been updating it ever since, most recently to add the word director.
