Beachside Drive-Ins for SBIFF 2021

That’s one of the pandemic pivots for the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s 2021 edition, which runs from March 31 to April 10. 

SBIFF, as it’s commonly abbreviated, will also host a full slate of virtual screenings, selected from the most submissions in festival history. And there’s the regular lineup of celebrity tributes as well, including Bill Murray, Sacha Baron Cohen, Amanda Seyfried, Riz Ahmed, Maria Bakalova, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Andra Day, Sidney Flanigan, Vanessa Kirby, Tahar Rahim, Zendaya, and Delroy Lindo. They’ll be broadcast live via SBIFF’s platform. 

“It’s imperative we bring a sense of hopefulness to 2021, but in the safest way possible,” said SBIFF executive director Roger Durling in an email to festival attendees this week.  “A virtual component was a given, but experiencing movies in socially distanced cars and being by the ocean felt oh-so-perfectly Santa Barbara, California.” The full lineup will be announced in early March. See sbiff.org.

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