Penélope Cruz to receive Montecito Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF)

Penélope Cruz will be honored with the Montecito Award at the 37th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Cruz will receive the award on Tuesday, March 8 at an in-person conversation about her career leading up to this year’s performance in Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers from Sony Pictures Classic.

“In the most complex role written by the master Almodovar, Penelope Cruz delivers the best performance of her career and a master class in calibration and detailed acting,” remarked SBIFF’s Executive Director Roger Durling.  “In my book, she’s one of the great performers of our time.”

In Parallel Mothers, two women, Janis (Penélope Cruz) and Ana (Milena Smit), coincide in a hospital room where they are going to give birth. Both are single and became pregnant by accident. Janis, middle-aged, doesn’t regret it and she is exultant. The other, Ana, an adolescent, is scared, repentant and traumatized. Janis tries to encourage her while they move like sleepwalkers along the hospital corridors. The few words they exchange in these hours will create a very close link between the two, which by chance develops and complicates, and changes their lives in a decisive way.

The Montecito Award is named after one of the most beautiful and stylish areas in Santa Barbara. Past recipients include Amanda Seyfried, Lupita Nyong’o, Melissa McCarthy, Saoirse Ronan, Isabelle Huppert, Sylvester Stallone, Jennifer Aniston, Oprah Winfrey, Daniel Day-Lewis, Geoffrey Rush, Julianne Moore, Kate Winslet, Naomi Watts and Javier Bardem.

The 37th Santa Barbara International Film Festival, presented by UGG, will take place LIVE on March 2 through March 12, 2022. Official events including screenings, filmmaker Q&As, industry panels, and celebrity tributes, will be held throughout the city, including at the historic Arlington Theatre.

For the full list of films, panels and tributes for this year’s SBIFF go here.

Photo: Daniele Venturelli/WireImage