SFFILM Awards Honor Scott Cooper, Wunmi Mosaku, Kristen Stewart and Benicio Del Toro [VIDEO]
SFFILM celebrated four honorees for their achievements in contemporary cinema during the 2025 SFFILM Awards Night on Monday, December 8 in what has become one of awards season’s first and most important stops.
The event, simultaneously a fundraiser for SFFILM’s year-long initiatives supporting emerging filmmakers, was held at San Francisco’s Gateway Pavilion, located in the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture.
This year’s honorees were Scott Cooper (receiving the Irving M. Levin Award for Film Direction), Benicio Del Toro (receiving the Maria Manetti Shrem Award for Acting), Wunmi Mosaku (receiving the George Gund III Award for Virtuosity), and Kristen Stewart (receiving the Nion McEvoy & Leslie Berriman Award for Storytelling).
Cooper helmed the Bruce Springsteen biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in September. His past directing credits include Crazy Heart, Black Mass, and Antlers. Previous recipients of the award include Denis Villeneuve, Greta Gerwig, Ryan Coogler, Jane Campion, and Chloé Zhao.
Cooper’s award was presented by his Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere actress Odessa Young, who plays the love interest of Bruce Springsteen in the biopic.
Cooper gave a special shoutout to his daughter Ava, a UC Berkeley student, who joined him from across the bay and gave kudos to SFFILM for “championing filmmakers who push past comfort and into the unknown.”
“Independent cinema survives because organizations like yours insist that it must,” he said during his speech.
Mosaku, a supporting actress contender for her turn as Annie in Sinners, advised all young emerging artists to embrace who they are. “Your hopes, your dreams, your fears, those are the things that make you special and individual. So don’t shy away from that. Embrace it, learn it, love it.”
Mosaku credited her trust with co-star Michael B. Jordan as key to their collaboration in the film: “Michael and I, we spent our rehearsal time just really getting to know each other and sharing our hopes, fears, passions… That’s how we got locked into each other as Smoke and Annie.”
“Just embodying Annie was the closest I’ve ever felt to my motherland,” said a teary Mosaku, who was born in Nigeria and raised in Manchester.
Mosaku’s award was presented by her Sinners co-star Delroy Lindo.
Awarded for her Cannes-premering directorial debut, The Chronology of Water, Stewart’s film represents a major career pivot for the Academy Award-nominated actress. Stewart’s award was presented by her The Chronology of Water lead actress Imogen Poots.
Stewart acknowledged the film’s presence within the film industry’s current corporate climate: “I think that there’s a hunger and a surge toward sharing experiences that will prevail no matter what. If you’re doing that from a position of power and result-oriented, money-grabbing idiocy, then you’re going to kill our business, so please don’t do that.”
Speaking to young female filmmakers, Stewart added, “It’s so hard to take a good listen to your own instincts. Just do it, for us all. Imagine making the same movie over and over for someone other than yourself. Let’s write ourselves into existence.” In classically irreverent style, Stewart pretended to eat her speech, exclaiming “This is all bullshit!” only to return to make impassioned pleas for supporting independent filmmaking and of her film’s star.
Having previously portrayed Che Guevara in Steven Soderbergh’s two-part film Che, Del Toro discussed the connections between the Argentinian revolutionary and his One Battle After Another character, Sensei.
“Che was a product of his time. It was a different time, the late fifties and early sixties… Che was a military man, Sensei is a resourceful man that people turn to whether for sanctuary, resources, hope, or even freedom. There’s an element in Sensei that is a little bit more modern, that thing of faith and religion… Different times, different people, but there is this element [of revolutionary spirit] that connects them.”
For his role as Sensei, Del Toro has already received nominations from the Golden Globes, Critics Choice, and Gotham Awards, and has won Best Supporting Actor from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review.
Del Toro’s award was presented by his One Battle After Another co-star Regina Hall, who regaled the audience with a story of a tender scene the two stars shared in a film years ago. “We cried, we hugged, and I knew that we would work together again,” she said, only to reveal it never happened to huge audience laughter.
In his speech, which closed the night, Del Toro acknowledged the importance of organizations like SFFILM and what they do for young and current filmmakers.
“Everyone has a role to play in doing something worthwhile and showing up for each other,” del Toro said. “That’s what revolution is. That’s what art is. Legs in a relay race. A chance to dig your heels and do whatever you can do to help and create, and then pass the baton.”
“That’s what San Francisco Film is actually doing — supporting the next generation of artists and filmmakers. And that matters. Because it’s simply not possible to do that consistently without community and without each other. So keep at it. Breathe.”
Sinners is currently streaming on HBO Max. One Battle After Another is currently in theaters and available for rent or purchase on all video-on-demand platforms. The Chronology of Water is currently in select theaters, and will open nationwide on January 9, 2026. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is expected to reach streaming in early 2026.
See the full intros and speeches from Regina Hall and Benicio Del Toro and Imogen Poots and Kristen Stewart below.
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