IN A TIME WHEN THE HUMAN SPIRIT in the face of the impossible is in high demand, athletes like Angela Madsen strike a particular chord with audiences. Row of Life, Soraya Simi’s new documentary, charts this force of nature, as Madsen takes on the seven seas, in search of conquering them and her own fears. 

BRINGING BOTH BODY AND SOUL TO HER WORK, it should come as no surprise that Zoe Saldaña shines in this years’ surprise dark horse Emilia Perez. Her performance has earned her the American Riviera Award at the 40th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival, on Wednesday, February 12th at 8pm at the Arlington. This comes on the heels of the Cannes Film Festival honoring her with the Award for Best Actress, and the Golden Globe following suit with the Best Supporting Actress Award. Now, with an Oscar nod for her portrayal of “Rita,” Saldaña has a shot at the elusive triple crown of acting.

EVOKING A PORTRAIT OF ONE OF MODERN MUSIC’S MOST ENIGMATIC SUPERSTARS, Bob Dylan, Timothée Chalamet demonstrates the depths he can plumb in pursuit of a role. The 40th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival has taken note, and will honor Chalamet with the Arlington Artist of the Year Award on Tuesday, February 11th at 8pm at the Arlington. The recognition is well deserved, as Chalamet has had a watershed year, and the night will offer an in-person tribute and career retrospective.  

WRITERS EAGER TO GLEAN NEW INSIGHT into both the artistry and the business of writing in Hollywood were as well informed by writers such as Joslyn Barnes (Nickel Boys) and Peter Straughan (Conclave) as they were entertained by Jesse Eisenberg (A Real Pain). Clint Bentley (Sing Sing), Mona Fastvold (The Brutalist), and Tim Fehlbaum (September 5) rounded out this year’s Writer’s Panel, one of the most popular events at the film festival. With IndieWire’s Anne Thompson, Editor-at-Large, as the moderator, the panel offered advice and anecdotes into the creative process, the art and craft of writing, and what makes an award-winning screenplay.

PRESENTING SEVEN OSCAR NOMINATED WRITERS AT THE ARLINGTON ON TUESDAY NIGHT, the Santa Barbara Film International Festival hosted a panel of talented, well versed writers of all cultures, career arcs, and backgrounds.

Helmed by IndieWire’s Editor-at-Large Anne Thompson, it was a lively panel — entertaining, funny, and insightful, covering the creative process, the craft of screenwriting, and working with your heroes. Thompson, who has a long and reputable background in film criticism, proved to be a deft interviewer, drawing the panel out to talk in depth about their work. Making the truth your own was a theme that ran throughout the night.

THIS YEAR’S ADL STAND UP AWARD at the 2024 Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) will go to The Last Daughter, a feature documentary about an Australian woman’s quest to piece together memories of two loving families — one white and one Aboriginal — that a government program separated her from. 

BRADLEY COOPER WAS RECENTLY IN TOWN TO FIELD A Q & A for the Santa Barbara International Film festival’s Cinema Society series, along with his Maestro co-star Carrie Mulligan. There was a noted visible and present chemistry between to two actors in real life, which has translated well to the screen in Maestro, a fearless love story chronicling the lifelong relationship between Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein. 

CRACKLING WITH INTRIGUE, Ensemble Theatre Company’s production of Hamlet promises an innovative new take on the world’s greatest play by the world’s greatest playwright. Timeless, an iconic tragedy of betrayal, vengeance, and madness, Hamlet remains forever the archetype of a gripping thriller.

Director and adapter Margaret Shigeko Starbuck brings both a passion for and notable experience in Shakespeare’s repertoire, having directed Henry IV Parts I and II, Measure for Measure, and Richard II. “What I love about these plays is that when they’re performed well, it’s completely clear, and the stories and the characters and some of the poetry is so relatable and so prescient and so sort of achingly familiar, I think, to us as a contemporary society, and a contemporary audience,” she shared in a telephone interview.

IMPOSING SLABS OF BRUTALIST GREY SLASHED WITH SHARP LIGHTING sets the Nordic Noir atmosphere of Ensemble Theatre Company’s new Hamlet, which premiered last Saturday at the New Vic. A triumph of mood and character, deeply engaging and highly entertaining, the production is atmospheric yet shot through with biting humor, poetic yet grounded in viscerally emotional performances.

Despite the odds stacked up against him, Domingo was raised in a household full of love, and taught he could achieve whatever he wanted. A testament to what being loved can produce, he spoke at length of his desire to give that back to the world.

NOW THAT AI IS EXPERIENCING A PEAK IN THE ZEITGEIST, in public discussions, and articles, discourse around it is more important than ever. To open a local conversation, UCSB Arts & Lectures invited Nicholas Thompson, former Editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and current CEO of The Atlantic and Nita Farahany, distinguished professor at Duke University and author of The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology, to Campbell Hall for a conversation on January 31st at 7:30pm and to share their wealth of knowledge and experience on the subject.

A SCATHING EXAMINATION OF  IMMIGRATION POLICY under the Trump administration, Separated has won the 2025 Social Justice Award from The Fund for Santa Barbara, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting organizations that seek progressive change. Partnering with the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, the Fund sought to award a film that supports social change through the advancement of economic, environmental, political, racial or social justice.

CREATING A COMPLEX NEW QUANTUM AI CHIP at Google’s Campus near the University of California Santa Barbara is international news that caused Google stock to go up significantly at the announcement. The chip is called Willow and it provides advanced quantum error correction at incredible speeds. Willow will be manufactured at the Goleta campus.

“The vision was to build a useful, large-scale quantum computer that could harness quantum mechanics — the “operating system” of nature to the extent we know it today — to benefit society by advancing scientific discovery, developing helpful applications, and tackling some of society’s greatest challenges,” said Hartmut Neven, Quantum AI’s founder, in a press release about their latest advancement, the Willow quantum chip.

STARTLING DEVELOPMENTS IN THE WORLD OF ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA have left several platforms in uncharted waters, as repercussions from the recent election bear out in real time. As a nationwide ban on TikTok, which has over 170 million users in the United States, looms near on January 19th, unexpected responses have surprised even the most astute watchdogs and pundits in the social media space.

DIVING RIGHT INTO THE DEEP END OF HIS MUSICAL LEGACY, ELDER STATESMAN OF JAZZ HERBIE HANCOCK grabbed the audience and threw us into the deep end of the pool with him. The lights had barely gone down when all of a sudden the ensemble was cooking—hot, fast, switching tempos, a high-speed ride through 40 years of jazz through the eyes of Herbie. Set before the rich velvet backdrop of the Arlington on a Wednesday night, the band touched on his classic songs like Chameleon, and Cantaloupe Island, but also allowed each member to chart their own course, to fantastic results.

HILARIOUSLY BITTERSWEET, SMART, AND DARING, Alice, Formerly of Wonderland is a refreshing take on a revered story. Set in late 1800s Oxford, told with omniscient narration by the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland, this is an imaginative story about the very real possibility that Alice Liddel, the inspiration for Lewis Carrol’s books, and Prince Leopold, 8th heir to the crown under his mum, Queen Victoria, might have fallen in love. A triumph, Alice, Formerly of Wonderland is perfectly at home in the Old Vic, and runs through June 16th.

T​​RENDING TOWARDS CLEAN LINES AND MID-CENTURY MODERN SENSIBILITIES, the winners of this years AIA Santa Barbara’s annual juried Design Awards will be on view at the Channing Peake Gallery beginning February 6th and through March.

NOW THAT AI IS EXPERIENCING A PEAK IN THE ZEITGEIST, in public discussions, and articles, discourse around it is more important than ever. To open a local conversation, UCSB Arts & Lectures invited Nicholas Thompson, former Editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and current CEO of The Atlantic and Nita Farahany, distinguished professor at Duke University and author of The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology, to Campbell Hall for a conversation on January 31st at 7:30pm and to share their wealth of knowledge and experience on the subject.

WHEN NASA SENT THE GOLDEN RECORD, a gold-plated disk representing the human race, into interstellar space on the Voyager spacecraft, some sounds and images were bound to end up on NASA’s cutting room floor. One of those redacted pieces will be here at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and discussed at length this Sunday, December 8th, with author Emily Rapp Black joining visual artist Dario Robleto in the Mary Craig Auditorium.