2025 Santa Barbara International Film Festival International Features Panel – Moderated By Roger Durling

Quotes from the Panel:

• Gints Zilbalodis (FLOW) – “My goal is to create an experience. Music is closer to filmmaking than any other art. It transcends culture. Filmmaking is a lanuage in itself. Images are a language, they are not foreign.

• Gints Zilbalodis (FLOW) – “I’m very curious to know what it’s like be cat. Everything is so intense because you see it through the cat’s point of view. I’m not really interested in the world building but more of the journey.”

• Gints Zilbalodis (FLOW) – “I didn’t want the camerawork to feel constructed but rather based in discovery. I’m not interested in manufacturing emotion.”

• Walter Salles (I’M STILL HERE) – “The film is an offering of reflection at time in Brazil. The film is about overcoming loss. How this one woman can confront this authoritarian state is so inspiring.”

• Walter Salles (I’M STILL HERE) – “The house was a character of the film. The use of 35mm and Super 8 film were offerings of reflection and memory. There’s something that happens when you’re shooting film, you need to be precious. Film creatures the texture to add to loss.”

• Walter Salles (I’M STILL HERE) – “The real life Eunice refused to be seen as the victim. I would never embrace melodrama for the sake of theatricality. I would never betray her story. Trust the spectator. The film embraces the fact that we can overcome”

• Mohammad Rasoulof (THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG) – “When you live in a system of repression and dictatorship then being yourself becomes a challenge. When I started making films the first question I had was : how do I maintain being myself? I used metaphors to express myself. After my third film, I realized that metaphors in itself were a form of censorship.”

• Mohammad Rasoulof (THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG) – “Due to censorship, I had to turn limitations into solutions. The story began when I was in prison and one of the officers told me he questioned his life and his job. This story and this chasm highlights the issue between tradition and identity.”

• Mohammad Rasoulof (THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG) – “These people choose to be part of this system. They are not ignorant, it’s a conscience choice. A lot of times when people think they are following their beliefs, they are really following their influences.”

• Jacques Audiard (EMILIA PÉREZ) – “I have this nostalgia for silent film. Films where there is purely acting and light. What I mean is that I try to escape from spoken dialogue.”

• Jacques Audiard (EMILIA PÉREZ) – “I’m more of a literary fellow than a cinephile. I can do without images but I can’t do without words.”