SBIFF Field Recordings: Take Two

Documentaries; Female-Driven Films; Penelope Cruz and more

WORDS Ninette Paloma

International Women’s Day ushered in the second half of the festival, and with it, a striking collection of female-driven films that broke our spirits open with awe and compassion.

Director Heather Kessinger’s Nasima (The Most Fearless) followed the life of Bangladesh’s first professional female surfer over the course of eight years, offering us rare access to the forces working against a young woman’s fight for autonomy and her pursuit of a singular dream; Ojai filmmakers Camilla and James Becket uplifted us with the unrelenting energy of physicist/activist Vandana Shiva in The Seeds of Vandana Shiva as she continues her farmer advocacy work around the globe while taking on behemoth GMO corporations; in Yuni, Kamila Andini lays bare the claustrophobic life of a young Indonesian Muslim woman with symphonic precision and vulnerable beauty; and in Nana Neul’s Daughters (Tochter), we laughed until it hurt as we followed best friends Martha and Betty on a road trip through Germany, Italy, and Greece in their attempts to reconcile complex relationships with their fathers. But it was in a stirring monologue by Dutch actress Kim van Kooten in Saskia Diesing’s courtroom drama Judgement Call that drove the plight of the global female experience home to a riveted audience.
This was a film line-up for the SBIFF history books.

Spain descended on Santa Barbara by way of Penelope Cruz and her husband Javier Bardem- both 2022 Oscar nominees who were also the recipients of this year’s Montecito Award and Maltin Master Award (along with Nicole Kidman who joined virtually), respectively. Through clips of their storied careers in both Spanish and English – not to mention the full-volume charm of these casually eloquent actors – audiences were hit with the full range of their artistic chops and the journey of their relationship both on and off the screen.

Thanks to a fresh team led by newly anointed Programming Director Claudia Puig, the documentary selections took the spotlight, offering up an expansive collection of international and local subjects, including an expertly curated Doc Shorts series with thoughtful themes like “Identity and Integrity” and “Art and the Artist.” One in particular, Jordan Matthew Horowitz’s Lalito 10 about a Guatemalan schoolteacher who constructs a classroom on wheels to reach rural students during the pandemic, seemed to echo the sentiment of this year’s filmgoers and guests: through mud and fire, virus and variant, the human spirit prevails.