The Santa Barbara Film Festival is obviously starry a party of up and coming filmmakers and Oscar hopefuls, but this year the programmers have also decided to make it more accessible
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival is obviously starry a party of up and coming filmmakers and Oscar hopefuls, yet this year that the developers also have decided to make it more accessible. For the first time, it is going to be free for the community, organizers announced Tuesday.
The 36th installment kicks off on March 31 with the world premiere of Aaron Mauer’s”Invisible Valley” concerning the people of California’s Coachella’s Valley, from the undocumented farmworkers into the rich snowbirds and music festival partiers. The movie also explores the”looming ecological crisis threatening it .”
Following a year of mostly online film festivals, the festival is now taking a hybrid strategy and building two beachside drive-in theatres for the screenings. There’ll also be a ticketed online part. There are 47 world premieres from the lineup, hailing from 45 countries in addition to star tributes, buildings and neighborhood outreach programs.
Celebrity honorees at the 36th installment include Amanda Seyfried, Delroy Lindo, Sacha Baron Cohen, Bill Murray and Carey Mulligan, Who’s getting the Cinema Vanguard Award. In this event, moderated by Dave Karger, will occur on April 3.
Feature films in the lineup include”Trees of Peace,” about four girls hiding and fighting for survival during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994,”Coast,” to a teen in a small town who falls for a punk singer, and”Alaskan Nets,” a documentary about a high school basketball team that has a shot in the state championship for the first time since 1984. Other films include”Last Call,” a documentary about the hospitality sector in Queens at the beginning of COVID-19,”Highway One,” set around a New Year’s Eve party in rural California and also”The Revolution Generation” about the largest youth generation in history and the challenges they confront. The documentary”$avvy” explores the topic of women and individual financing.
U.S. premieres include”Fellinopolis,” concerning the world of Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini,”Educate Me If You Can,” a French documentary about educators in Burkina Faso, Bangladesh and Siberia, and”Six Angry Women,” from New Zealand, which covers the 1984 kidnapping of an Auckland University lecturer.
“This year’s festival will look different on several fronts, but we are unchanged when it comes to what’s most important: our love of film, and our commitment to bringing forward a schedule of unmatched quality and sharing it with our community,” explained Roger Durling, the festival’s executive director. “We’re so excited to have the chance to be a source of pleasure and confidence.”
Closing night on April 10 will emphasize brief documentaries by local filmmakers, covering subjects as diverse as an annual trip by the Chumash people into a historic site, a woman’s quest to restore ecosystems with sheep and how the residents of Santa Barbara survived 2020.
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival regularly attracts more than 100,000 attendees annually.