A Film Centered Time and Place

At 40, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival Followed a Time-Tested Format, but with a Critical New Game and Home

Filmmakers from the Audience Choice Award sponsored by 'The Santa Barbara Independent' — 'Out of Plain Sight' directed by Daniel Straub, Rosanna Xia | Photo: Ingrid Bostrom

In many ways, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival celebrated its milestone 40^th anniversary over nearly two weeks according to a time-tested plan. A series of celebrity and industry tributes, many tightly tied to Oscar nominees, take over the Arlington and create varying degrees of public buzz inside and outside the theater. Meanwhile, the real meat of the festival is a strong and diverse film program (led by programming director and critic Claudia Puig for four years now), with a generous selection of foreign films to savor.

Despite the familiar format, clear signs of change and growth were in the air. Most pressingly, our old habit of hunkering down at the Metro 4 multiplex for most of the film screenings changed this year. SBIFF now calls the former Fiesta 5 its festival home, a k a the SBIFF Film Center. The organization’s acquisition of, and major renovation plans for, the flexible space — a welcome downtown addition to its state-of-the-arthouse-art Riviera Theatre haven on the hill — seeks to make Santa Barbara a film center, year-round and with a reputation reaching far beyond the 805.

On opening night, Executive Director Roger Durling, the charismatic festival leader now 23 years into his game-changing run, enthused, “I can’t believe how far we’ve come.” Durling was a regular presence during the festival, including his deeply invested role as moderator for the tribute to Colman (Sing Sing, Rustin) Domingo and as the onscreen representative in the SBIFF trailer no fewer than 185 times (the number of films on the program). As an affable presence perched in the warm ambience of a Film Center theater seat, Durling appeared like a cultural guru or motivational speaker inviting our participation in the cause’s role in the introductory screener. In the oft-seen intro, Durling utters a phrase tantamount to a mantra in this depressingly divisive time in America/the world: “Film unites.”

For the record, we had luminaries of Santa Barbaran status (well, Montecitan status) in the Arlington this year, including Zoe Saldaña, the wonder woman of action, sci-fi, and now surreal musical culture for her Oscar-nom-kissed role in Emilia Pérez. Summerlander Kevin Costner, whose second installment of Horizon was pulled from theatrical release, got the spotlight for an actual U.S. screen debut. And Oprah Winfrey made the 15-minute drive from her Montecito compound for a good and worthy cause, to give the award to Domingo.

Overheard in tributes and panels at the Arlington. Angelina Jolie’s final words in her acceptance speech diplomatically addressed the American carnage in the White House: “We can’t afford to impose systems at the expense of humanity.” Domingo, whose long and hard-fought acting career has finally come to public fruition and acclaim, opened his night, a bit tearfully with “If you knew what it took to get here …”

And in a comic relief moment of the festival, a full house at the Arlington heard Josh Brolin say to his friend and Dune co-star Timothée Chalamet, “I will kill you, motherfucker!” For context, Brolin was responding to Chalamet’s claim that, at 29, he needed to step up his game because “the clock is ticking.” Brolin announced he’d be 57 the next day, inspiring a rousing round of “Happy Birthday” in the house.

For sheer, scream-festy buzz, the prize went to the Virtuosos Award night. After watching the tail end of the Super Bowl frenzy at the Public Market, I sauntered a block away and heard the mass of merriment outside the Arlington with the arrival of such mega-stars as Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez, who joined onstage by such young notables as Mikey Madison and Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown).

Some films got deserving festival attention from multiple sources, including the superlative The Brutalist (my vote for best American film of 2024): Stars Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce got their double-barreled Tribute night, while director Brady Corbet was an articulate voice on the Outstanding Directors of the Year panel and his co-writer partner Mona Fastvold lit up the always-enticing Writer’s Panel.

Coming in from a lesser-trafficked corner of cinema, the world of animation, Latvian Gints Zilbalodis — creator of the astonishingly fine Flow — appeared both on the new International Director panel and the Animation Panel. Waxing optimistic about the potential of animation, he ventured, “Now that you can render reality so easily — I made Flow with free software (Blender) and on PCs — where else can you go? It is similar to the arrival of photography, which helped inspire painters to explore abstraction. It’s easier to sell a story based on realism, but when it’s more stylized and abstract, things get more interesting.”

Thinking about my own favorite films of the festival, the Lithuanian film Drowning Dry was the film that most affected me, intellectually, in that Laurynas Bareiša’s cool, maze-like project challenges both the film medium and the viewer’s awareness. We’re forced to stay awake and follow the math of the story’s non-linear path.

Among recurring themes in the program, the painfully pertinent subject of immigration policy follies are dealt with in both Errol Morris’s powerful Separated and Nathaniel Lezra’s Roads of Fire — both award winners at last Saturday’s Award Breakfast. Another important documentary was also feted at the El Encanto breakfast — the powerful and depressing Santa Barbara Independent’s “Audience Choice” winner Out of Plain Sight, a documentary about deposits of DDT casually dumped in the ocean near Palos Verdes. The story is investigated by dogged and well-spoken Los Angeles Times reporter Rosanna Xia and with experts including UCSB professor David Valentine.

Apparently, not everyone shares my ecstatic view of Coastal, the Neil-Young-on-the-bus-and-onstage doc and a refreshing new spin on the tired “rock doc” format directed by his wife Daryl Hannah. Maybe you have to be there, in Neil über-fanland, to fully appreciate it. The world as seen through the eyes of youth were driving forces in the Beata Parkanová written and directed Czech film Tiny Lights (Mia Bankó was the child performer of the fest) and the bittersweet and engrossing Color Book, one of the best American films on the roster.

One surprising but engaging subtheme this year chronicled the flight of rural Mongolians forced by social and environmental factors to move into cities, in two excellent films, The Wolves Always Come Out at Night and To Kill a Mongolian Horse.

As testament to the high caliber of the 2025 SBIFF program, it was tough to settle on a reasonable Top Ten. But here’s what I got, as of a groggy, post-festival Monday morning: Drowning Dry, Tiny Lights, Hakki, Coastal, The Summer Book, Shepherds, To Kill a Mongolian Horse, Separated, Waves, Color Book.