Outstanding Directors, Outstanding Conversationalists

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With personalities and perspectives every bit as distinct and memorable as their films, directors Ryan Coogler (Sinners), Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme), Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value), and Chloé Zhao (Hamnet) proved to be engaging storytellers offscreen, as well as on, at last night’s Santa Barbara International Film Festival Outstanding Directors of the Year Award ceremony at the Arlington.

The four Academy Award nominees each spoke individually with moderator Scott Feinberg. After bursting into fame with her low budget, Oscar winning film Nomadland in 2020, Zhao then co-wrote and directed the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film Eternals in 2021. It was a $272.6 million box office flop, after which Zhao said, “I learned very humbly that there are four seasons to a person’s life and to a creative cycle. And I didn’t understand the importance of winter. We don’t like winter because it isn’t as productive as summer, and so we tend to get serious in winter as if it is still summer. And that was true for me in terms of the ecosystem of my own creativity.”

She said she learned that if you don’t winter, nature will force you to. “That’s what happened to me. So I spent four years trying to allow things to actually die, which is a really uncomfortable feeling, and then also sitting in the process of the compounds, the crystals, you know. So by the time a little bird dropped his feet into that, soil he was growing with energy, the fertility that I was missing.”

That fertility led to 2025’s Hamnet, the moving film (based loosely on real events and a novel by Zhao’s co-screenwriter Maggie O’Farrell) that explores the grief of Shakespeare and his wife Agnes after their son Hamnet’s death.

Trier brought a nice touch of humor to his interview with Feinberg. The Danish-Norwegian filmmaker, who, prior to Sentimental Value, was best known for his Oslo trilogy — Reprise (2006), Oslo, August 31st (2011), and The Worst Person in the World (2021), which was nominated for an Oscar for the Best Original Screenplay — said, “I grew up with a generational dream of world cinema.”

A skateboarding champ as a teenager, Trier’s father, Jacob Trier, was a film sound technician and his grandfather, Erik Løchen, was also a filmmaker and screenwriter. “I think you have a word for this,” he said, emphasizing his Nordic accent. “Nepo baby.”  

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On his storytelling philosophy, Trier said, “I believe that we all have a very particular angle on the world.” Adding that there are many more streets of Oslo he still wants to share with us.

Josh Safdie’s high energy, entertainingly “look there’s a squirrel” interview style had a similar vibe to his film, Marty Supreme. He spoke lovingly of being from New York, where much of his work takes place, and said that living in a walking city “I pass probably 300 narratives every day. You encounter all walks of life.”

Known for cleverly casting non-actors in his films — including Santa Barbara favorite Pico Iyer (see story) and Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary in Marty Supreme — when asked about his pattern of “thinking outside the box of who you’re going to see in this movie,” Safdie said, “You want that person’s essence to be readily apparent.”

On first meeting his Marty star Timothée Chalamet, Safdie described him: “This young man is in the corner of this room. He can’t stand still, and he’s just got this hungry energy, this intense dream, like his dream, you could feel other people believed in it. That’s how powerful it was. And he was Timmy Supreme. It’s who he was, and I immediately was attracted to it.”

Casting his longtime collaborator Michael B. Jordan in Sinners was also an easy call for director Ryan Coogler. “He just elevates everybody’s game,” said Coogler of Jordan, who SBIFF will honor with the Outstanding Performer of the Year Award on Thursday night (see story).

Their 12-year creative partnership spans five films, including Fruitvale Station, Creed, Black Panther, and now Sinners, which broke records as the most Ocsar nominated film of all time.

Asked about how he processes all of this incredible success, Coogler said, “I try to keep it in perspective in a healthy way.”  The former Sacramento State Hornets wide receiver eloquently described his strategy in football terms, saying that though he didn’t like to admit it, as a high school player there were some “very long runs, and I was so surprised that I was making this run, and I was about to score that I would start celebrating early. [And mess it up.] It’s an awful feeling.”

He continued, “It turns out in college, I got in trouble the other way by running too far [penalty territory]. … Now I keep on learning, not looking back at any particular accomplishment, keep your eyes going forward and going down forward.”

As a parent of three (with his wife and producer Zinzi Coogler) and with aging parents, he said, “I am trying to get to a point in life where I’m becoming more comfortable with reflection. So, I’m trying to find a healthy balance of enjoying it but not losing it too much, because I’m not sure what it all means anyway.”

After a quick round of group questions, artist-director Julian Schnabel (who had come from his own SBIFF film premiere at the Riviera Theatre that night, see story) presented the Outstanding Director of the Year trophies to each of the awardees.