Read more from our preview of SBIFF 2026 here.
Faced with a daunting list of more than 200 choices on the SBIFF program menu, it can be a formidable task to zero in on which films to see, which to miss, and which films are suited to one’s taste. Some of that option anxiety is relieved when the films start to roll out and recommendations, word of mouth, and literal buzz on the street start to roll in.
From a short list of films available for advance screening, we can offer a bit of help from the front, with a seven-pack of recommended films to watch out for. The variety of this selection — from drama (light and dark) to documentary (nature-oriented and humanity-leaning) to family-friendly animation and back — is a good indication of the festival’s traditional attention to the importance of being diverse and inclusive.
Belgian director Laura Wandel draws on a naturalistic, almost doc-style approach, with handheld camera and sans musical score, with Adam’s Sake (L’intérêt d’Adam). It’s about a pediatric ward doctor wrestling with legalities, a troubled young mother, and a son (Adam) who refuses to eat — shades of the narrative in the excellent If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. It’s a close-up story, with ample close-up shots and a rare intimacy with characters trapped in complex situations.
From a more feel-good-ish zone comes director Hernán Jiménez’s Abril, a warm, sweet and comedy-dusted drama from Costa Rica about a woman fighting for the love of her temperamental teenaged daughter and looking for love, and finding it at home. A variation on the rom-com theme, with heart and refreshing subtlety.
Part of the allure with writer-director Andy Hines’s emotionally charged crime saga Little Lorraine is its “exotic” setting, on the rugged coast of Cape Breton, with its ambience conveyed with the classic Scottish fiddling of the region, and work in the fishing and mining fields. And, as happened in the late ’80s, the area was also an unloading shore for boatloads of cocaine and hashish, a temptation for out-of-work protagonists lured in by the shady Uncle Huey. In a twist, the basis for the film is heard under the end credits — Adam Baldwin’s gritty and moving story song, “Lighthouse in Little Lorraine,” which Hines made the video for and expanded into a feature project.
In the documentary Dear Lara, the #MeToo movement circles around to the insular, self-protective world of classical music — a theme also woven into the satirical classical world send-up, Todd Fields’s brilliant Tár. The “Lara” is respected Canadian violinist Lara St. John, who has performed in Ventura County and around the world. News of the deeply rooted tradition of sexual abuse in classical music education and professional practices began to leak into the public sphere around the time of the Harvey Weinstein–driven toppling of film industry sins, through such exposé sources as Anne Midgette’s Washington Post story on the subject in 2018, and St. John’s personal testimonial story in the Philadelphia Inquirer about her own brush with abuse as a 14-year-old at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music. The film names names, as it should, including James Levine, David Daniels, Placido Domingo, and Steven Shipps.
The result in the St. John–directed doc is fascinating, chilling, and necessary.
Another truth crusader is in the documentary spotlight in Steal This Story, Please!, about the veteran activist radio/television journalist and Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman. The title shouldn’t be confused with Abbie Hoffman’s book Steal This Book; the title refers to Goodman’s wish that the alternative news and “scoops” her team uncovers would be “stolen” by the often-repressed corporate media. What began humbly in 1996 out of New York’s WBAI has grown from 19 radio stations carrying it to nearly 1,500 (including Santa Barbara’s own KCSB). Directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, the film — winner of this year’s “SBIFF Social Justice Award sponsored by The Fund for Santa Barbara” — blends Goodman’s own story and stories she has passionately covered through the decades, from the East Timor tragedy through 9/11, the Gaza conflagration, and the current reign of Trump-ian terror.
A Life Illuminated, directed by Tasha Van Zandt, is a sterling model of a science-related doc with information and entertainment content in check, along with storytelling verve and a visual allure. The film, filed under the “Great Outdoors” sub-category at the festival, is a portrait of the famed oceanographer (and UCSB graduate) Edith Widder, best known for her work with deep sea “bioluminescence,” created by animals that generate their own light. A dogged curiosity and fascination with the relatively untapped world of deep-sea life led her, over several decades, to go diving and inventing machinery — a problematic stationary camera called “Eye in the Sea” to her “electronic jellyfish,” as a “way to talk to the animals, Dr. Doolittle–style.” She does so, in a triumphant moment of a first sighting of the massive and mysterious giant squid.
The film, engaging for oceanographic geeks and the rest of us, traces her history through to a recent mission in pursuit of deep-sea life-emitting “flashback,” which she calls “the language of the planet.”
Moving from deep inner space to outer space — and the part of the long-standing Canadian cinema ethos involved in creative uses of animation — Space Cadet is a sweet and all-ages-suitable “family” saga, with no dialogue, a coating of savory ambient music, and a winning empathetic nanny robot (a k a “guardian bot”) character at the tender core of the story, tugging at our heartstrings in unexpected ways. His young charge, a female Space Academy graduate sent off to the moon on a six-month mission, fends off nasty green cosmic critters and navigates plant life and a music-generated scheme to return home. A dreamy winner of an animated invention directed by Kid Koala.
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival takes place February 4-14. For the complete list of films, synopses, and other special events, please visit sbiff.org or the SBIFF app.
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