For die-hard SBIFF veterans heading to the Arlington Theatre for the traditional opening night ceremonies, it may be tempting to say “another spin of the klieg lights, another festival.” But this year’s model comes with special strings and milestones attached.
This, after all, is the year the festival can say, to quote Judd Apatow’s midlife crisis flick, This Is 40 — between the luminous 25th and 50th birthdays, but significant nonetheless. No crisis in this operation, though, just upward mobility. Not at all incidentally, this is also the year SBIFF can proudly boast a home of its own, with the acquisition of the five-screen SBIFF Film Center (formerly the Fiesta 5 multiplex), along with the new addition of screenings up at the festival’s flagship Riviera Theatre.
This is also one of the festivals which kicked off its dense 11-day program of screenings, tributes and much more, on a high note. Opening night films have not always been memorable or indicative of what’s to come, but they snared a prize with last night’s opener, French writer-director Laura Piani’s sensibility-friendly Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, a moving and literate comedy with a poignant, slow-brew romantic undertow.
Lead actress Camille Rutherford is engaging and bookishly neurotic as a frustrated writer/bookshop worker granted a writer’s retreat in England, where assorted intellectual and romantic frustrations — and a spitting llama — thicken the plot. But hope keeps springing upward. Fittingly for a respectable film festival opener, Jane Austen closes with a surprise cameo by the masterful documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. With his sage-like calm, Wiseman appears as a poet reading at Shakespeare & Co., just before romance rises from the ruins.
Santa Barbara City Councilmember Wendy Santamaria | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom 
Santa Barbara City Councilmember Eric Friedman and his wife, Julie, at the opening night of SBIFF | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom 
Santa Barbara City Councilmember Oscar Gutierrez and Darla Bea | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom 
Santa Barbara City Councilmember Kristen Sneddon | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom 
Artist Mary Heebner, who created the 2025 SBIFF poster art | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom
Vestiges of the real world’s current and unfolding woes understandably entered into the evening, as when Mayor Randy Rowse paid tribute and offered compassion for the Los Angeles wildfires, noting that “Santa Barbara is no stranger to disaster … hopefully, SBIFF will be a little bit of a distraction” for visiting Angelenos. The festival has also partnered with Direct Relief, which is offering matching donations up to $100,000 for disaster relief during the festival.
Roger Durling, now 23 years into his heralded tenure as festival executive director, subtly danced around the subject of the T-word elephant in the global room, when emphasizing that “I leaned big-time on the international aspect of the festival …. This is not an isolationist film festival. I believe in the impartiality of art — art is for everyone. We all have a beating heart and have far more in common than we know.” He added, only half-ironically, “I’m done preaching. Breathe in, breathe out, and enjoy being with each other at the film festival.”
And on Tuesday’s grace note of an opening night, the film feast begins.
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