(L to R) James Mangold, Coralie Fargeat, Brady Corbet, Sean Baker and Jacques Audiard. (Sara Stevens / Daily Nexus)
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival honored five directors with the 16th annual Outstanding Directors of the Year Award, presented by The Hollywood Reporter. Since 2009, the festival has invited the year's directorial trailblazers to celebrate their contributions to the film world.
The Feb. 10 event took place at the Arlington Theatre and honored a range of directors varying in age, nationality and genre. What unites them is the critical acclaim they have received this awards season -- all five of this year's recipients are nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and each of their films vying for Best Picture.
This year's honorees include Brady Corbet, director of the seven-year project "The Brutalist;" Coralie Fargeat, director of the gory and profound film "The Substance;" Jacques Audiard, the French director of the Spanish-language musical "Emilia Pérez;" James Mangold, director of the Bob Dylan biopic "A Complete Unknown;" and Sean Baker, whose thought-provoking "Anora" seems to be this year's frontrunner at the upcoming Academy Awards.
A lull had settled over the Arlington Theatre in the wake of the previous night's star-studded Virtuosos Award, the calm after the Ariana Grande-induced storm. Baker even managed to mosey through the audience with nothing but a few hushed whispers. But despite their off-screen nature, the quiet genius of the five directors attracted a packed audience of die-hard film enthusiasts.
Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) Executive Director Roger Durling took to the stage, adorning an all-white tuxedo before an eager crowd. Durling welcomed the movie lovers to the event, before introducing Scott Feinberg, executive editor of awards for The Hollywood Reporter, to moderate the discussion.
The first honoree was Audiard, whose film "Emilia Pérez" follows a lawyer who is enlisted to help a notorious Mexican cartel leader transition into life as a woman. The film has been the subject of both acclaim and controversy, with recently unearthed tweets from lead actress Karla Sofía Gascón blemishing the film's Oscar campaign. Tumultuous PR decisions aside, the film itself has seen its fair share of criticisms despite its 13 Academy Award nominations, with many audiences questioning why a Frenchman made a movie in a language he doesn't speak. Feinberg began with discussing this very question.
"Let's just talk about how you, a Frenchman, wound up making a Spanish language musical," he said. The audience laughed at this, but it was clear from the way that Audiard tapped his leopard-print sneakers on the floor that he wouldn't be backing down from this question.
"You're really underestimating French people," he joked. Audiard's answer became more serious as he spoke. He recalled working with other languages throughout his career, including English and Tamil, saying that when it came to Spanish, "what interests me is the musicality of the language."
When asked about directing the extravagant musical numbers that "Emilia Pérez" showcases, Audiard revealed that working on a studio set was the key.
"I would call we did a modest musical. So it was my first time doing a musical, but it was also my first time working on, entirely, in a studio, and that, for me, was both a shock and a tremendous discovery," he said. "I absolutely loved doing it because working in the studio allowed me to attain a level of stylization that I never could have had in real locations."
The next honoree was Baker, fresh off of numerous award show wins including a recent Best Picture at the Critics Choice Awards.
So naturally Feinberg's first question was, "How was your weekend?"
To which Baker retorted, "Oh, uneventful."
Baker's film "Anora" tells the tale of a young exotic dancer and her escapades with the disobedient son of a Russian oligarch. All of Baker's previous films have featured some aspect of sex work, an unintentional trademark that began with his first film "Starlet" (2012). "Starlet" is the story of an unlikely friendship between a 21-year-old adult film star and an 85-year-old widow.
Baker befriended the adult film stars on set, and they would regale him with tales from their demanding careers. He recalled his feelings at the time: "I would like to tell a story that focuses on them as people and not the livelihood."
"Anora" was seemingly inspired by one of these stories. "I had this idea being based on a few stories I heard of a young woman being held as collateral for something that her husband did in the Russian mob," Baker said. He wanted to present the moment as "an abridged version of a Hollywood rom-com" before "immediately slamming us into something totally, very different," he said.
Corbet was the next honoree for his directing in "The Brutalist," an exposé of the American myth. The three-and-a-half hour-long epic about the emergence of Brutalist architecture is told through the perspective of a Jewish Hungarian architect fleeing Nazi Germany.
Corbet's work has been inspired by collective, generational trauma, and he wanted to do something to capture the post-World War II anomie.
"It seemed to me that post-war psychology and post-war architecture were sort of intrinsically linked," he said.
"So many of the unrealized projects and buildings from these young designers that must have been so excited in the 1920s ... they couldn't imagine that after the first World War that they would see something like that again in their lifetimes," Corbet continued. "It's absolutely tragic."
Corbet's film also centers relationships between artists and the patrons who fund them. Feinberg turned the question of the film back to Corbet, and his experiences with patrons in the film world. Despite the somber tone of the film, Corbet expressed reluctant optimism about the current relationship between Hollywood and its creatives.
"This crop of films this year are notably very radical, daring, original movies," Corbet shared. "And I'm not really a glass, you know, half full kind of guy, but I feel relatively, sort of, kind of, optimistic. Just tonight."
Next, Feinberg introduced Fargeat, who directed "The Substance," a gory thriller about an aged superstar's decision to take a mysterious drug to become a better version of herself. "The Substance" notably comments on Hollywood beauty standards, but Fargeat pointed out that "Hollywood" is just a symptom of a larger issue.
"We have been fed with this idea that if you're beautiful, if you're thin, if you're smiling, then you can be on top, then you can be under the spotlight, and you're going to be famous, you're going to be loved, you're going to be happy. This is the dream, you know, that I grew up with. And Hollywood is just, you know, an incarnation of it," Fargeat said.
Feinberg brought up Dennis Quaid's performance as Harvey, the sleazy manager who is a nod to Harvey Weinstein. Ironically, the scenes of Harvey vigorously eating shrimp were some of the most problematic in the editing process.
"It was a scene that made so many guys uncomfortable. Like they were like, oh no, come on with the shrimps. Tone down the shrimps, please," Fargeat said, laughing along with the audience. "I was really shocked, because of all the gory, violent, bloody stuff that I thought would disturb people, if I had thought that the shrimps would be the thing ... what I learned on my first feature is when there is a scene that makes people very uncomfortable and that makes everyone uncomfortable, most of the time, it is because there is something very powerful in that scene."
"And so I stick to my shrimps, and I'm very happy," Fargeat concluded.
The fifth and final honoree, Mangold, likely boasts the most iconic resume, having directed films like "Girl, Interrupted" (1999) and "Walk the Line" (2005). His 2024 Bob Dylan biopic, "A Complete Unknown," documents Dylan's rapid ascent to 1960s folk fame and his eventual controversial switch to rock 'n' roll.
When Feinberg asked about Mangold's career-spanning journey across genres, Mangold insisted that genre doesn't play a huge role in how he constructs his film: "From my own personal experience making all these varied movies, the biggest thing I think, as you're listing them, is that they're not so different and that the experience making them is not so different."
But Dylan's story departs from the typical. "There's a kind of standard, almost Freudian dramatic structure, right, which establishes a protagonist with a problem, maybe a trauma, a childhood trauma, some kind of damage they're carrying. And then somewhere in the story, presumably late in the second act, this thing is disabling them, in their way, and they have to come to terms with it, speak its name," Mangold said.
"I didn't feel like I could do that with Dylan. I didn't feel like it applied. I couldn't identify a kind of trauma he was carrying that he was gonna have to escape from," he continued. "I did want to explore that relationship of the person who doesn't have that volcano, who may be really creative, incredibly sharp, but just, that's not there for them."
Dylan's motivations remain somewhat unknown, but Mangold has his theories. He spelled it out for the audience: "It's awesome to be talented, but it's also lonely."
The penultimate segment of the event was the group discussion, notably the first time that these directors would be together before the 97th Academy Awards. However, the on-stage atmosphere was void of any tension between the competitors. Mangold congratulated Audiard on the ways he played with genre in "Emilia Pérez," and Baker commented that he took the cast of "Anora" to see "The Substance."
"[It] was almost more of a bonding experience than the actual making of the movie," Baker joked.
When asked about their favorite pieces of feedback, Corbet told a heartfelt story about Sian Heder, the director of "CODA" (2021). Heder watched "The Brutalist" with her Hungarian father, who is currently suffering from dementia.
"She shared with me that was the first time that they'd had, you know, a conversation in a long time ... that was very, very touching," Corbet said.
This crop of filmmakers has been added to a small list of history-makers, with each director being a credited writer on their films and each film earning a nomination in the screenplay categories.
When asked whether they prefer writing or directing, Fargeat recounted the horrors of writing. "It's the first time that you put your guts on the page ... it's the one where you're really in the process of creating something nobody has asked for," she shared.
Feinberg wrapped up the panel discussion by thanking the directors for their time and contributions to the film world, seemingly concluding the evening. However, it soon became clear that the moderator accidentally skipped over the ceremony's actual finale -- Durling's closing speech and the handing out of awards.
Amidst the confusion, Durling took to the stage and urged audience members to retake their seats. The directors, under the premise that their time on-stage was done, found themselves strewn about the stage -- Fargeat, kneeling to speak to a passionate fan, Audiard clutching the panel chair and the other directors standing around the podium. It was amusing to see five of the greatest minds in cinema scattered about on stage looking lost.
"I live for cinema, I feel the most alive when I am watching movies," Durling said in his closing statements. "So tonight, because the five of you are on the stage, I've never felt more alive. Thank you."
All five directors moved to center stage, lifting their trophies triumphantly and marking the true end to the celebration of film. While only one out of the five directors will receive the Oscar trophy on March 2, in the eyes of SBIFF, they are all winners.
Note: Quotes from Jacques Audiard were dictated in English by translator Nicholas Elliot for the duration of the event.