SBIFF Breaks Boundaries with This Year’s Batch of Films and Honorees

A Look at the 40th Annual Festival Through the Lens of an Intern

The 40th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival ushered in a boundary-breaking year for the industry. It featured actors, artisans, and directors alike from different backgrounds, genres, and perspectives. This year’s batch of films was cutting-edge and honored a group of brilliant minds who both pioneered and executed cinema masterfully.

I had the pleasure of attending both the Ralph Fiennes tribute and Outstanding Directors Award, contextualizing the masterful standard of this year’s honorees.

Ralph Fiennes, left, and Scott Feinberg at the SBIFF Outstanding Performer of the Year award night on February 6, 2025 | Photo: Ingrid Bostrom

Ralph Fiennes, Outstanding Performer of the Year

From left: ‘Conclave’ director Edward Berger left Ralph Fiennes, and SBIFF Executive Director Roger Durling | Photo: Ingrid Bostrom

Beginning with the Fiennes tribute, the evening took audience members on a journey through his extensive and diverse portfolio with more than four decades of brilliant screen appearances. Fiennes provided insight into his beginnings in acting, especially crediting his inspiration from Shakespeare and his mother.

The evening ultimately centered around Fiennes’s recent portrayal of Cardinal Lawrence in the Academy Award–nominated Conclave. Upon observing and reviewing Fiennes’s work, it became evident to host Scott Feinberg and audience members alike that this role was the capstone performance of Fiennes’s career. This watershed performance combined his effortless and brilliant acting across all of the various genres of which he has worked in over his long career.

Feinberg highlighted the depth and breadth of Fiennes’s long-winding successful career on the screen by underscoring the lack of deserved recognition that the actor has received. Despite several blockbuster movies and breakthrough roles, and a plethora of award nominations, Fiennes has been nominated for three Academy Awards and never won one.

Despite his acclaim, Fiennes remains a humble individual and actor who enjoys mastering his craft. The evening highlighted excerpts from his standout performances in Schindler’s List, The English Patient, Harry Potter, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The Menu, to name a few.

Outstanding Directors of the Year

Emerging visionary minds were highlighted at the Outstanding Directors Award honoring all first-time Academy Award–nominated directors: Brady Corbet (The Brutalist), Coralie Fargeat (The Substance), Jacques Audiard (Emilia Perez), James Mangold (A Complete Unknown), and Sean Baker (Anora).

‘Emilia Perez’ Director Jacques Audiard | Photo: Ingrid Bostrom

The evening marked the final time that the group will appear on the same stage until March 2 for the Oscars.

Each director spoke one-on-one with Scott Feinberg (who moderated both evenings I attended) before speaking as a panel at the end. They expressed their collective excitement, joy, and gratitude for both the honor at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and the upcoming 96th Academy Awards.

When asked what they want to do after March 2, the panel overwhelmingly answered unanimously with “sleep.” Some added their plans to read, spend time with family, but all winded up with “getting back to the hell of writing.”

Feinberg’s conversation with French director Jacques Audiard, of Emilia Pérez, proved particularly invigorating for the audience. Audiard, fitted out in trendy fashion, was joined by a translator, who brought his same exhilarating sass and energy that filled the stage with laughter and light.

Their conversation highlighted Audiard’s interesting position as a French film director responsible for creating a Spanish-language film. Their dialogue also underscored Audiard’s original vision for the screenplay as an opera and the evolution of the film as it unfolded both in front of and behind the camera.

Feinberg next introduced director Sean Baker, who created Anora. Feinberg contextualized Baker as a cinephile, which accurately framed his inspirations for his film style reminiscent of the 1970s, taking after the films that he grew up on. Baker describes shooting the film on 35mm and even flashing negatives, which he joked is a “no-no” for insurance companies in today’s world.

The discussion highlighted a thread running through Baker’s portfolio, with several of his major pictures featuring narratives of sex workers, between Red Rocket, The Florida Project, Tangerine, Starlet, and now Anora. Baker described having befriended adult sex workers through his job in the movie industry and wanted to present the more mundane, routine aspect of their livelihood, instead of the sexualized and objectified enduring narrative that is most often represented in Hollywood.

Feinberg next spoke with director Brady Corbet of The Brutalist. In discussing his movie, Corbet reflected on the way that his narrative shares the story of generational trauma and the stolen lives of architects who had lofty visions that they never could share with the world due to the atrocities of World War II.

Corbet examined the array of movies selected for this honor and the best director pictures for the Academy Awards, aptly finding that all these films had something in common, despite appearing vastly different in genre and reception. The thread running through these films was their daring qualities, in that all of the directors took risks in creating the films, which Corbet shares is what really gets people to get out to the box office.

Coralie Fargeat, director of ‘The Substance’ | Photo: Ingrid Bostrom

“I’m not a glass-half-full kinda guy, but I am kinda, sorta proud of what is happening here tonight,” Corbet playfully joked about the cohort of films honored by the Outstanding Directors Award.

Feinberg next spoke with Fargeat about her film The Substance. Fargeat spoke about the intersection of her identity as a woman and a director, in a male-dominated field. In discussing the story depicted in The Substance, she described wanting to portray the toxic pressures of show business and the discourse surrounding women and their bodies. She also nudged at the symbolism of the name Harvey (as in Weinstein) in The Substance as representative of the harms of the film industry.

Fargeat described the uncomfortable reception to the shrimp-spitting scene with Dennis Quaid in The Substance. While being astonished by this selection as the most intolerable, despite gory and graphic scenes throughout the film, Fargeat understands that, “when there is a scene that makes everyone uncomfortable, it tells you that is a powerful scene.”

The final director interviewed was James Mangold of A Complete Unknown. Feinberg highlighted his career working across a diversity of genres, to which Mangold responded that “genres put movies in boxes, they don’t necessarily imply what it is to make a movie.” Mangold maintains that the experience of walking on set at a $25 million versus a $250 million film are vastly similar. It is the experience of working face-to-face with actors that defines the film.

In writing, producing, and directing A Complete Unknown, Mangold expressed a sense of nostalgia for Bob Dylan’s career and the 1960s in general. “I miss that New York. I miss that America. I miss the sounds and smells of it.”

In rendering Dylan’s universe and character, he engaged in extensive dialogue with the artist himself and tried to understand his deep-seated baggage. He said, “It’s awesome to be talented, but it’s also lonely.”

The culmination of the evening in the panel of directors made it apparent that this year’s batch of films and filmmakers is extraordinary both in talent and industry reception. This year pushed the envelope in terms of messaging about the industry, telling unseen narratives, and captivating audiences with a tasteful combination of new and old cinema techniques.

For me, the 40th Santa Barbara International Film Festival was equally charming and magical, and a gripping experience to hear from the brilliant minds behind this year’s blockbusters.