Uniting Through Cinematic Lenses at SBIFF 2026

Uniting Through Cinematic Lenses at SBIFF 2026

SBIFF 2026 Going Strong at Midpoint,
with Celebrity Power and Worldly Cinema Highs,
and McHurley Film Center Getting Its Due Spotlight

By Josef Woodard | February 12, 2026

SBIFF 2026 opened last Wednesday with a fairly roaring blast of inspiration. No, it wasn’t all to do with the opening film, A Mosquito in the Ear, a perfectly pleasant adoption drama in India, which someone suggested would have made a very good short subject. Rather, the inspiration came in the form of a powerful and courageous speech by festival chief Roger Durling, concerning the importance of art and the aura of authoritarianism in our current moment. 

Spinning off a propitious reference to the film/musical Cabaret, about the Nazi storm warnings cutting into Weimar Republic artistic abandon, Durling brought the message home — without naming names — and knocked it out of the park, to borrow a phrase he often draws on to describe films and performances. He concluded with a pressing public message: “I beseech you to remember that we have to protect the arts and human rights, immigration, and the right to love whoever we choose…. The arts ultimately unite. Two thousand of us are together, under one roof.” (Read the whole speech here.)

And the festival was off and running, with a major new point of celebration being its proud new festival home, the McHurley Film Center. Its five-screen multiplex was subjected to a radical makeover, with the help of many patron dollars, especially the generous help of guardian angels Nora McNeely Hurley and Michael Hurley.

As usual, celebrities took the tribute hot seat for Arlington Theatre tribute nights, starting with Adam Sandler — the goofball comedian who has come in from the cold with dramatic turns in Jay Kelly, following Uncut Gems and PT Anderson’s stunning Punch-Drunk Love. (Story here.)

Ethan Hawke showed up the next night, on the heels of his Oscar-nominated role of the soggy sage Lorenz Hart in the witty epicenter of Blue Moon. He gets my vote. One of his early heroes, Santa Barbara’s own dude of dudes Jeff Bridges, did the award presentation honors, ending his impromptu speech with a no-nonsense proclamation: “I dig your approach, man! I dig your stuff.” Us, too. (Story here.)

A pack of mostly up-and-coming stars gathered on Sunday for the Virtuoso Awards tribute (Story here), and a truly star-studded worldly gathering of Oscar-nominated directors showed up for the International Director’s Panel on Sunday afternoon, among other events, including the Artisan Awards and panels featuring women in film and producers. 

Monday night (after press time) belonged to a powerhouse trifecta of Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Benicio del Toro, of One Battle After Another fame and Wednesday’s meet-up with Stellan Skarsgård (Sentimental Value). Still to come in the final weekend are the Thursday, February 12, tribute to Michael B. Jordan — who played twin roles in Sinners — and Kate Hudson, with Song Sung Blue cred. 

As has become a central feature of SBIFF, there is a strong mandate for bowing to Oscar. The festival is shrewdly timed in a pre–Academy Awards period, when famous film folks on the award-season circuit are eager to swing up to idyllic Santa Barbara. Crowds, from our town and from the tourist contingency, flock to catch stars in person, from the State Street interface of the red carpet to the up-close presence of the “this is your life” tributes in the Arlington. 

But much of SBIFF’s cultural worth is to be found in the margins, in terms of giving a forum to international cinema. Under the sharp and expansive watch of programming director Claudia Puig and her team, the festival grid is a richly diversified overview of cinematic directions and sources from around the globe. 

There’s more than political correctness at work in the fact that 50 percent of the program involves films directed by the 51 percent club. Directors who happened to be women were behind many of the best films I’ve seen so far, including Abril, Maysoon, Don’t Call Me Mama, and Perla. 

Like any film festival worth its salt, and especially those as potent as SBIFF, an underlying mission statement has to do with the preservation of the cinema species, including festival life and the deep but endangered culture of the movie theater/palace. At the International Directors panel, Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho (The Secret Agent) paid respects to the movie palace, in general and specifically the one he was in. “Each movie palace has its own history. I came to this place. I look at the architecture, and you [Durling] tell me that the first test screening for Gone with the Wind took place in this place. We immediately are talking about tens of millions of people that have come into this place, starting early in the 20th century.

“This is a place of congregation. This is not a religious place. But it can be religious depending on how you describe your relationship to cinema. So, these places, I think, are incredibly important for life in society. And this is why I think we all should fight to keep the cinemagoing experience alive.”

Ethan Hawke had similar reverence in mind during his award acceptance speech, when he declared that cinema “is my church of choice.” Hallelujah.

At mid-point of the 41st SBIFF, here is one avid fest-goer’s Top 10 list, in Monday morning mode. In no particular order: Abril (Hernán Jiménez, Costa Rica), Adam’s Sake (Laura Wandel, Belgium), You Had to Be There (Nick Davis, Canada), Steal This Story, Please! (Tia Lessin, Carl Deal; U.S.), Perla (Alexandra Makárová, Austria), Don’t Call Me Mama (Nina Knag, Norway), Lost Land (Akio Fujimoto), A Cowboy in London (Jared Christopher), Maysoon (Nancy Biniadaki), and Mortician (Abdolreza Kohani).

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