Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF)

A Guide to SBIFF, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival

Whilst many of you were getting ready to cover the International Film Festival in Rotterdam or the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, I went to Santa Barbara to cover the 35^th edition of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF). Attracting around 100,000 attendees across 11 days of films, SBIFF is one of the largest film festivals in California running just after the equally prestigious Palm Springs Film Festival. It’s also one of the closest to Los Angeles, a city which surprisingly doesn’t have a single big film festival in the way that San Francisco, New York, and many cities around the world do, despite being the home of Hollywood. (More on Los Angeles’ film festivals later this year). Because of its proximity to Hollywood, and the fact that it takes place a few weeks before the Academy Awards, it’s always a stop for many of the directors and actors campaigning for Oscar glory.

That being said, I wasn’t there to interview A-list celebs on the red carpet or catch re-runs of some of the Academy Award contender. I was at SBIFF to sample its lineup of films from 50 countries, in particular, the films screening for their International and Spain/Latin American competition.

So how was it? You’ve probably read some of the quick reviews we’ve been posting from the films we’ve seen on the SBIFF page, but what was SBIFF actually like?

The Audiences

One thing I noticed during my first day at SBIFF – a Saturday – was that I was the youngest person in the theater for every screening. By a long way. Most of the audience were 50+ with most of them being seniors. One lady that sat next to me for one screening even commented that it was nice seeing a young folk at the festival. I’m 28, so not being the oldest isn’t new to me, but I’ve never felt so young in a movie theater. They also mentioned that they didn’t see a person under 40 at the Palm Springs festival which they attended the week before. Maybe it’s a small city thing. Maybe it’s a U.S. thing as the audiences at the AFI Fest in Los Angeles weren’t young either.

However, this definitely isn’t a Film Festival thing as the BFI London Film Festival has a lot of young cinema goers. The BFI do a great job at getting students and people in their 20’s into their screenings. They offer cheap tickets to anyone 25 and under 30 minutes before the screenings start if there’s still space available (I’ve never been turned away as film guest seats are always freed up). As a result, most of their screenings are full or close to it. It would be great to see similar initiatives to boost younger audiences at SBIFF to ensure the loyal older audience is still there in 40 years’ time.

The City

Santa Barbara is a great small city. If you’re there for the week reviewing films, you have plenty of options for places to eat State Street. It’s also just nice wandering around the mission style buildings – the place is pretty. You can even walk to the southeastern end of State Street if you want to chill on the beach, which is a rarity at a major film festival. Plus, those of you in Rotterdam and Sundance would no doubt appreciate the warm sunny weather that’s almost guaranteed daily in Santa Barbara.

However, one of the main downsides to Santa Barbara is that it isn’t cheap. The food options were more expensive than many areas of Los Angeles as well as London and Berlin. For those on a budget, I’d recommend living off the Ralph’s deli at West Carrillo Street/Chapala Street and bringing your own water if you don’t want to spend $10+ per meal. Accommodation also was expensive for the MLK day weekend, so I was relived that one of my relatives was able to host me from just outside the city (thanks Javi).

The Experience

Just like all the other film festivals I’ve attended, the queuing situation at SBIFF was organized chaos. Before every block of screenings at the Metro 4 theater on State Street there were at least 5 lines full of people. The lines would spill onto the streets and completely block the sidewalk on that side of the road, so anyone not attending the festival has to cross the road to walk past it. However, I never saw or heard anyone complaining, apart from one guy cycling along the sidewalk blasting music that should have been on the road anyway. So even though it appeared chaotic, it did work. People queued up for the films they wanted to see and appeared to get to see them thanks to the many lines.

There were a lot of Q&A’s too, which is what helps a film festival to stand out. At SBIFF they had a lot of special stand-alone Q&A’s with Hollywood celebrities, but they also had roughly a 40% turn out for crew and/or cast member Q&A’s for all the international films which is a pretty good turnout for a small city like Santa Barbara. All of them were managed pretty well, even though, unfortunately, no film festival is immune from bad audience questions.

The volunteers were all great too, so it was a nice touch that SBIFF included a slide saying “Please give a round of applause for all the volunteers at SBIFF” before the start of every film.

The Films

Last, but not least, how were the movies at SBIFF?

Overall, I thought the selection of films could have been better. As soon as I saw the schedule, I was a disappointed in the lack of diversity in the films selected for the festival. There were over 70 World Premieres and films from 50 countries, but almost all of the international films were from Europe and the Americas. Most noticeably was a distinct lack of African films; I only noticed one feature film from North Africa (Papicha, the Academy Award submission from Algeria) meaning there were zero sub-Saharan African films. There was also a very slim selection of films from Asia, apart from the odd Turkish film and screenings of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite.

The International Competition

The lack of diversity was most obvious in the International Competition, in which 10 of the 12 films were European. The other two were Canadian, leaving 4 of the 6 movie producing continents left unrepresented.

Nevertheless, here’s my rankings of the 9 films I saw that competed in SBIFF’s International Competition:

The top three stood out, whilst the bottom 4 disappointed.

Spain/Latin American Competition

The Spain/Latin American competition made up for some of the diversity woes of the International competition with 11 films from 3 different continents (ironically one more than the international competition).

Of the 7 films I saw from the competition, there was a distinct split between Art-house festival fare and cheesy heartwarming films. The bottom two fell into the latter whilst the top 4 fell into the former. The top 4 were 4 of my favorite films I saw at the festival, showing that the Spain/Latin American competition didn’t just trump the International competition on diversity but quality as well.

Best of the Rest

The International and Spain/Latin American competitions weren’t the only films I managed to see thanks to some screeners sent out early by the filmmakers. The two best screeners I received were for Out Deh, a documentary about three inspiring young men from Jamaica and Song Sparrow, a short film depicting refugees being trafficked in the back of a refrigerated truck. The other short films I saw were all interesting too even if they weren’t perfectly executed.

Whilst it didn’t go as far as Palm Springs, which screened every single Academy Award submission for Best International Feature Film, SBIFF also screened a few submissions that haven’t received U.S. distribution yet.

Conclusion

Overall, SBIFF is a festival worth attending. Whilst you may not find a program that’s as diverse or weird as some of the other film festivals in California, you will at least get to be in a beautiful small city by the beach.

If you’re based near Santa Barbara, make sure you leave time to attend in 2021. Or, if you’re based in Los Angeles or further afield, it’s definitely worth making a long weekend trip and mix International films with mountain hikes and strolls along the sea.

Towards The Battle – Spain/Latin American Competition – SBIFF

In Towards the Battle, Louis, a French photographer, gets lost in French occupied Mexico in the 1860’s. He wants to photograph the French-Mexican War, but gets lost in the Mexican wilderness trying to find it. However, his encounter with Pinto, a Mexican peasant, gives him the companion and support he needs to carry out his quest.

Louis is in Mexico as commissioned by the French army. He holds a permission slip from the French general which acts as his pass to freely travel the region without reprimand from the roaming French army. It’s the only thing that separates Louis from the rabble of the French army. If he loses it, he’d be conscripted into the army, or, if he’s lucky, sent back to France.

Whilst he can escape from the marauding French army, he can’t escape from the Mexican wilderness. As the scenery changes from mountainous scrub-land to deep rain-forest, Louis is (literally) one step away from a premature death. It’s obvious he can’t survive by himself with two horses carrying his huge amount of photography gear. Luckily for him, a Mexican peasant named Pinto finds him when he’s starving and gives him the food he needs to survive.

From that moment on, they become Don Quixote and Sancho Panza-esque partners. Louis is Don Quixote: a leader of a well off background that loses himself in the quest of one of his hobbies. Instead of chivalry, Louis drags a mountain of photographic equipment across the Mexican wilderness in search of a war that doesn’t appear to exist. When Pinto finds him, he’s already gone a bit mad in his quest to capture a photo of the elusive war. Pinto is Louis’ Sancho Panza: a Mexican peasant that knows Louis is mad, and doesn’t understand him (he doesn’t speak French), but happily goes along with Louis’ delusional quest because he’s got nothing better to do. Along the way, he saves Louis a couple of times, and subordinates himself to him to allow Louis to live out his fantasy. The Don Quixote allegory gives Towards the Battle a timeless feel, and gives an extra layer to Louis’ madness and his slow progression to his own awareness which he reaches in the final scenes.

From the scenery to the setting to the characters, Towards the Battle was one of the films that flew under the SBIFF radar. It’s a well made update of Cervantes’ Don Quixote applied to the French occupation of Mexico. It’s used to show the madness of the French in Mexico and the absurdity of the French occupation of Mexico. The French (Louis) and Don Quixote both live a world away from the reality.

Land Of Ashes – Spain/Latin American Competition – SBIFF

In Land of Ashes, thirteen year old Selva lives in a small costal town surrounded by sea and dense forest. Her mother has passed away, so she shares the duties of looking after her frail old grandfather with Elena, an older woman who comes and goes as she wishes.

Elena is the only female role model that Selva has, but their relationship is a strange one. Selva obviously needs her for companionship and help navigating her path to adulthood, but she also despises her. She spits in her food and trades vicious insults with her over the dinner table which eventually unravels into laughs thanks to her grandfather. Later, Elena invites her dancing, but disappears soon after hitting the dance floor in order to score a few drugs and never returns. It reinforces Selva’s vulnerability and her inevitable life alone.

To keep herself company, Selva manages to conjure visions of her dead mother. These visions help to guide her through the challenges she faces, such as looking after her grandfather, and they also help her to come to terms with the impermanence of life and her future life alone. Her grandfather’s death is inevitable, but it’s not until Elena’s disappearance that she realizes that she will be living alone. Seeing her mother in the nature around her provides her with the comfort that her family will continue to live in her and her surroundings after her grandfather passes away.

Land of Ashes was one of the best films I saw at SBIFF. It creates a vivid world from just a few images of the natural world they live in – mostly of the night sky and dense jungle, but also of the local fauna. The magic in it adds some mysticism about Selva’s future alone and the life in the wilderness around us.

Lane 4 – Spain/Latin American Competition – SBIFF

In Lane 4, Amanda is most comfortable in the water. Lacking her parents’ attention at home, swimming is the only thing she has. But she’s not alone in the pool. Priscila, the star of her swim team, becomes her friend and rival in the pool and in life.

The film starts with Amanda completely still, floating underwater in the fetal position in a swimming pool. By comparing the swimming pool to a womb, the opening image shows Amanda’s desire to return to the womb, to escape all the stresses of her daily life (see Freud’s Thanatos Instinct). In the pool, she can escape from her parents who don’t understand her, the social pressures of maintaining a ‘cool’ image, and her own growing pains. However, unfortunately for her, she cannot stay underwater forever. Eventually she has to surface for air. When she breaks from the fetal position and swims to the surface, it’s symbolic of her second birth. It’s her rebirth as a woman and a world full of expectations for her.

The scenes of Amanda underwater are the corner stones of Lane 4. Each one of them indicate her underlying desires. First, as mentioned above, she’s reborn from a girl into a woman, even though she desires to return to the simplicity of the womb. Secondly, she dives to the bottom of the pool on her own to reluctantly collect a hairband given to her by her mother. This image symbolizes her reluctance to grow up and tie back her hair – something that her mum thinks she should do to show off her ears. The third underwater scene shows her diving towards Priscila’s boyfriend. This scene starts to reveal her desire to assume Priscila’s position as the coolest girl on the swim team which are confirmed in the last underwater scene to end the film. Above water, Amanda is mostly silent and rarely reveals what she thinks, but underwater, she reveals all of her underlying desires and urges.

Lane 4 contains most of the typical coming of age film tropes, such as:

Dealing with absent parents.
Dealing with friends who have grown up before you.
Dealing with a dad that still sees you as a little girl.
Jealousy of the popular girl at school.
Wanting to go out with most attractive boy at school.
Her first period.

As a result, it will feel very familiar to other coming of age films, such as Alba. The main thing that sets apart Lane 4 from other films is that it’s set within a competitive swim club. This environment, and the underwater scenes that reveal her hidden desires, made Lane 4 one of the most memorable films at SBIFF.

Only The Animals – International Competition – SBIFF

Only The Animals features a bunch of interconnecting narratives spanning across France and Cameroon. Each narrative is connected to the murder of a French woman during a snow storm in rural France. It’s weird, entertaining, and satisfying as every piece of the puzzle falls into place. Even the initially out of place opening of a man riding his bike through Abidjan with a goat on his back is eventually linked in and understood.

It’s a fun ride but I haven’t figured out what’s the point or message beyond ‘things happen by chance’. Not saying that it has to have a message – this film was enjoyable to watch – but it would turn a showy multiple narrative film into something better. Maybe I’m asking for too much after seeing the Trump era unravelling of a white upper class family in 2019s stand out murder mystery, Knives Out.

If anything it could be that everything the people aren’t grateful for gets reversed on them. E.g. Joseph is an inanimate loner who can’t love that ends up loving an inanimate loner who can’t love.

Only The Animals covers a lot but doesn’t feel slumped. While every character could have been given more of a backstory, it does fit the movie to not dwell so much. The fun is in watching the transcontinental story slowly unravel as each characters viewpoint layers onto the next.

Side note: slightly stereotypical story of witch doctors and scammers in Africa, even if it is hilarious watching them do their work to a horny middle aged white guy.