SFFILM Executive Director Anne Lai and Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks Discuss the SFFILM Awards and the Future of Film Festivals

You might not know it but the San Francisco International Film Festival is the oldest running film festival in the Americas. It celebrated its 67th year with the 2024 edition and for those 67 years has been the SFFILM Awards Night, recognizing talent on both sides of the camera, from actors to writers to directors, that have made an impact on the year in film.

This year will celebrate Denis Villeneuve with Irving M. Levin Award for Film Direction for Dune: Part Two, Demi Moore will receive the Maria Manetti Shrem Award for Acting for her work in The Substance and presented by actor Connie Nielsen, the George Gund III for Virtuosity Award will go to Malcolm Washington for his feature directorial debut The Piano Lesson presented by Filmmaker Cheryl Dunye, and Jason Reitman will receive the Nion McEvoy & Leslie Berriman Award for Storytelling for his film Saturday Night, presented by actor Gabriel LaBelle.

The 67th SFFILM Awards Night is the organization’s year-end celebration of the year’s best filmmaking, and a vital fundraiser and will take place at the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture in San Francisco on Monday, December 9. The funds raised during the event provide critical support for year-round programs in youth education, artist development, and exhibition. SFFILM supports filmmakers at every part of their path, from student, to first film, to master, and bringing audiences to their work.

SFFILM Awards Night is co-chaired by Jennifer Hymes Battat, Courtney Benoist & Jason Fish, Heidi W. Castelein, Lisa Kleiner Chanoff & Matt Chanoff, Dale Djerassi, Lee Flynn, Agnes Gund, Katie Hall & Tom Knutsen, Fred M. Levin, Merriman & Eric Mathewson, Leslie & Scott Olrich, Robina Riccitiello & Jim Sottile, Sarah Schoellkopf & William Neil, Maria Manetti Shrem, Charles & Kristy Thornton, Laney & Pasha Thornton, Katie & Todd Traina, Alexandra & Spencer Wells, Charlie & Barbara Winton, Penelope Wong & Tim Kochis.

I sat down with SFFILM Executive Director Anne Lai and SFFILM Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks ahead of awards night to talk about, well, awards, and what the landscape for celebrations look like in a period of political unrest, the ever-evolving scope of film festivals in a post-pandemic world and what they are looking to in the future.

Erik Anderson: So once again, the SFFILM Awards has a fantastic quartet of honorees in Demi Moore, Malcolm Washington, Denis Villeneuve, and Jason Reitman. Can you talk a little bit about, each of you, what goes into selecting the recipients and how they represent the year in film?

Jessie Fairbanks: I start probably in June pretty much as soon as the festival was wrapped from the year prior. Always keeping an eye on what’s coming out and what the exhibition windowing schedule is looking like. Spend a lot of time talking to teams about who they might be building a campaign around for films that have been released in the earlier part of the year, as well as what’s coming down the pike. And then Anne and I start watching things over the summer and are very grateful that studios and rights holders and filmmakers share their work with us early in this stage so that we usually make our decisions in August. And then it’s really just about putting together… Making sure the stars align essentially in terms of where somebody is physically and within other productions and commitments. But in general, we’ve been very lucky.

Obviously, we’ve been giving this award out since the founding of the festival in 1957, so this is going to be the 67th year that we’re doing awards night. And we have an incredible legacy of creatives that have been honored in those 67 years. And so, I think what Anne and I are always really looking for is people who are doing things that feel noteworthy and transformative and bold. We look for things that are really interesting. We’re very cognizant, of course, of where individuals are in their career trajectory. And then we’re also looking for the kind of unexpected outside the box choices that can be fun or a little bit different because the discussion can tend to focus around a few individuals in certain spaces. And so we’re always mindful of who might be outside of that list and where can we look for somebody that is doing something really worthy of recognition that would also bring some really unique perspective to the evening.

EA: And Anne, what’s a little bit of your process of starting that early in the year? There are some things, like Dune: Part Two had already screened, The Substance was at Cannes, so you had a little bit under your belt to work with.

Anne Lai: There’s always something, I feel like pretty early in the season where I don’t know. Jessie, I’m texting you or texting me. It’s like, this feels really obvious. This feels like a really good one to go with. And so casting back to last year, I think I felt that very early on with Barbie and with Greta. I think Greta is someone that we were interested in no matter what. And it was great to see that just come out with so much fanfare but also really, really deserve it attention. I think that’s really tough. I think if Deni is a different choice, and also I would say is someone that I think we’ve admired, and I’ve admired throughout his career, and I just don’t think we’ve had a moment where it’s like, oh, this feels like either the right time, the right moment, the right film that deserves sort of recognition in a way that we can sort of welcome him here, and bring him into a space that we’re really celebrating him.

So someone who’s perhaps a little bit later in the career but also constantly evolving. So, to me, that’s always exciting. And I think again, Deni, I did not go to a can this year, but certainly the attention coming out of that, and what was interesting for me because she’s been in the back of our heads, and we’ve been aware of her for, how many years? Years and years and years and years, and there’s a constant slight reinvention or an unexpectedness in terms of what she does. And I think this one was so, as Jessie said, incredibly bold and also a really leaning into something that is very visible. And it leans into an expectation of what she is meant to be in the public eye in a way that feels both subversive and absolutely right at the same time. And so that always feels like something we’re celebrating.

EA: Is there a format that you kind of go through of actors versus directors or what kind of creatives, like this year is three directors and one actor? Does that just work itself out organically?

AL: We always know we’ll have a director award, and we always know we’ll have an acting award. The storytelling award leans a little bit more into screenwriting, but often is a writer and a director and someone who really excels in all of those areas. So I think there’s always a little flexibility and, honestly, it’s what is speaking to us and feels the most interesting and the most exciting to be able to. So I don’t think we go in with a set thing of it has to be this, or it has to be this. I think we’re always looking for what is going to be a little bit of a mix that feels both…

I think about this with narrative. It has to be both inevitable and a little surprising along the way. And if you can do that with four courses, so to speak, that’s maybe not the best way to sort of present it. But with four, which is fairly compact in a way, but it means that we can be spending a decent amount of time with each of them and really honoring each of them and kind of go through a little bit of a journey of people at slightly different points in their career, different perspective, different kinds of work that they’re being able to do. And I would say one of the things Jessie and I we talked about very early on in thinking about what The Substance is. It’s like that’s a little bit uncategorizable, but you would say that it’s a body horror, it has elements of satire, it has elements of horror, all of these things to it.

And that isn’t an area that I think we can even sort of look back at the last number of years and say, yeah, we always will find a film that does that. It’s rare. And so that feels fun and also feels different for us.

EA: And it’s a genre that’s kind of started to take hold almost in a mainstream way, which is a little surprising. So I think the timing of honoring Demi Moore and the film, it makes perfect sense.

AL: I think anytime you go back to seventies, maybe even early eighties, but let’s say very comfortably seventies and the Corman era and you are making a social statement, you are making a political statement, but you’re going to do it through this really unexpected lens. And I do think that films and stories, they go through cycles and we are really in an interesting cycle, which is like, oh, we can embrace this in a slightly different way.

EA: Exactly.

AL: We can be a little subversive.

EA: Jessie, I wanted to ask, while most award shows and festival presentations are in January and February as a film and the Gothams on the East Coast position themselves in the first week of December, what do you think the benefit is by kicking off this early?

JF: Listen, we’re masterminds, we’re completely strategic about this. (laughs) It worked really well for us. The awards used to be a part of the festival, and it is a big enough event and the celebrations are so enormous that it was worthy of becoming its own event separate from the festival. And both of them have moved around the calendar a little bit in the 67 years that we’ve been doing this, but for us, it works very well to be at the end of the season. This is a fundraiser. We are a non-profit arts organization and this is the only fundraiser that we do. And so it works very well for us in terms of what our mission is and our objective and our audience. And then it happens to tie in very nicely with what is happening within the industry. So we’re served well by where we are within the award season and also the award season, I think, those that are out there that are working on this are benefiting from an event that is at the top of December.

EA: I’m glad you mentioned the fundraising element. I think sometimes that can get lost in the idea of awards nights and things like that and that a festival, even with the legacy of something like SFFILM still absolutely is dependent on fundraising. Can you talk a little bit about just about the fundraising and why that night is so crucial?

AL: I tend to think with nonprofits, everything is fundraising. We all love the work that we get to be able to do, whether it’s exhibition or artist development or education, but it does require resources to be able to do it. And so everything that we do, it’s running a business. You have to be able to keep the engine running. What’s nice about a fundraiser that is dedicated for that, everything is sort of driving towards it. What’s nice is, we can reinforce what our mission is in terms of supporting independent voices and trying to create a space that is going to highlight things that we really both love and admire about the kinds of work that go out into the world. But it really is meant and designed to be for the audience that is in the room to understand who we are, to understand what the importance of film and the arts is both in the community space but just in impact in the world in general, and why we feel it’s so important to keep it very vibrant.

And with all the things that have happened over the last few years, and we will often see this. There’s lots of things that require attention and care and support, and I think everyone who works in the arts both feels very passionate about what that work is and also understands, it demands the financial ability to keep going. No one, I think, creates an arts nonprofit solely for the purpose of making money. You would be doing something very, very different if that was your goal, but you are trying to bring attention to filmmakers who are really early in their career and give them resources before anyone pays attention to them. If we can be in a position to take a little bit of risk and help someone else take a little bit of risk, that’s really wonderful. The nice thing about the fundraising piece or the way that we sort of look at what an awards night has become but also can continue to be, is it is really looking at people who might have recognizability might have achieved a certain level within their career, but at some point they didn’t.

At some point, they were unknown and unseen and not necessarily given the resources to achieve what they have. And so, if that story or understanding in order to get to that place, everyone has a different place of where they start and working and supporting an organization that can help do that year round, that can maybe yield a next version of a Deni or a Jason. With Malcolm Washington, it feels really exciting to have someone who has such a wonderful debut film and also sees the larger mission of what that film is meant to achieve in terms of the whole family working on getting that adaptation out into the world, which feels very, very cool. So yeah, everything is always trying to be a bit of a fundraiser to make sure that we can do all the things that we want to do year round, but this one is perhaps maybe the splashiest, the biggest, the most visible in a way.

And that’s always a wonderful thing and we’re lucky, I think, to have good attention of those who attend and support, but then also I think of how the filmmakers and the studios who come in and participate and support, that’s a really wonderful position to be in.

JF: Yeah, I’m glad, Erik, you mentioned the legacy part too, just because we are the oldest film festival in the Americas and that is something that gets sometimes lost. The fact that this festival has been going on for now 68 years. We’ll be the 68th edition in 2025 is remarkable considering how much effort it takes to keep a nonprofit going and then to be able to have an award ceremony that has been going in tandem for the same amount of time with nominees like Akira Kurosawa and Harrison Ford, Spike Lee, Ryan Coogler, Bim Vendors, Kathryn Bigelow, Chloe Zhao. The list goes on and on and on of the number of luminaries who saw value in what we’re doing at our organization and we’re delighted to receive an award and to come and participate. I think all of those people, as Anne mentioned, you’d be hard-pressed to meet anyone in the film ecosystem who has not been supported in some way by a film festival.

That is where so many individuals get their start, either directly by showing their film or attending and making relationships or participating in a conference or a development or a mentorship program through an artist development or an educational outreach program. And our organization does all of those things. And so there’s also some really beautiful energy that happens within the room as everyone kind of opens up and gets to share about their journey and how they got to whatever film it is that we’re celebrating them for in that moment. All of them at some point relied on nonprofits and relied on film festivals. So there’s nice symbiosis there that we get to be excited about, and that excitement is infectious and everybody in the room feels that both those that are supporting this and those that are being honored. And I think we also have done some really interesting things in the last few years of doing kind of the unexpected.

As Anne was talking about earlier, we gave the Virtuosity Award to Stephanie Hsu when we were really excited about what she was doing. I was so impressed with the work that she’d been doing in television and her transition to Everything Everywhere All at Once, but no one was talking about her in terms of really the award season at that point, she was kind of that dark horse. She wasn’t even a known dark horse and then made it all the way to the short list for the academy. I saw American Fiction last year, well in advance. Cord Jefferson was the first person that we sent an invite to last year. I was so impressed with his script and with his directing of American Fiction, and then what a shot. I mean he was just off and running as he should be. He’s such a wildly talented and kind individual.

And so it’s all of those things. It’s being able to celebrate legacy, but it’s also being able to capture a moment while people are in the middle of kind of a creative transformation or just finally being recognized for what they’ve been doing all along. Nicolas Cage was our recipient last year. Nicolas has done over a hundred movies. He’s not an unknown, but to take in totality the work that he has contributed was a really beautiful moment that he doesn’t get, actually. He’d never really received a lifetime achievement award for his performance. And so we feel really, really honored to be able to do this work.

EA: This might be a rocky road to go down, but there’s often a sentiment of ‘why do we need awards,’ and ‘should we be celebrating whenever the country or the world is in a state of crisis?’ And I might argue that it might be the best time to do that, but what are your thoughts on awards and things like this during periods of political strife?

JF: I think they’re actually incredibly important. Art reflects our reality for us and is a prison through which we understand the geopolitical context of our time as well as history, and in some ways can be a prognosticator of what is to come. I think also one of the reasons why there is a universal affection for films is because they are a sense of escapism. And there is a communal element to going to the theaters and being in a dark room with individuals and watching a story that transports you to somewhere else. And in that process, hopefully you are inspired, challenged, invigorated, exposed to something new and that it activates our empathy and that helps all of us walk out. You look at the four films that we’re celebrating this year, there’s so much we could go into with Dune and how that has correlation to conflict and to a political and environment, but the film is also so much about being accepting of other cultures and understanding other spaces.

You look at the body horror that is The Substance, but it is so much about skewering this idea of the commodification of beauty in women and it’s operating on a much deeper level. And if our awards can help people pay a little bit more attention to a title, that’s wonderful. The Piano Lesson is an adaptation of a renowned play, right? There are going to be a lot of built-in assumptions when they go into that. But the work that Malcolm was able to do within this film and the creative decisions that he made and the creative process he did with this established ensemble who had come from Broadway doing the same piece with the addition of Daniel Dedweiler, what he’s able to do and what the piano lesson is exploring is such a relevant and timely topic. And if more people are interested in the film, not just because it’s available on a platform or because it has some famous names attached to it, but because it’s getting a lot of recognition, that’s a wonderful thing.

AL: I think the other thing that I would say is, often, what awards can do, aside from all the things that Jessie talks about, which I think awards can do and certainly films can do as well, is that they can become a gateway to understand whether it’s a career path or an art form or something that is not familiar to you. And so, sometimes people will hear a little bit more about an awardee or an award, and then that becomes the way in, which is like, well, what does that mean when they talk about this? Or what does it mean when they started out in Missouri or wherever that was, that feels familiar to me. So what I think that awards can do, they can be a place that’s a little bit of escapism for one, but they can also be a path for someone to learn something about someone that might resonate for you and become the thing that you’re like, well, how would I go do that?

The Academy Awards when I was little, that was something you’d watch or the Tony’s or whatever it was. And that was how I began to understand how are things made. So I think they are a necessary and wonderful way of celebrating an individual or a film, but then they also become, I hope, a pathway for people to begin to maybe understand, particularly if you’re younger. Oh, that might be something I might want to be able to try to do or to try to explore. And that’s pretty great. It can really ignite your imagination, which I hope we can do.

EA: Definitely. And I think another path to that kind of empathy and discovery are documentaries, and SFFILM just had its 10th edition of Doc Stories. What part of Doc Stories play into the overall landscape of SFFILM programming for you?

JF: I mean, it’s huge. We have our two tent poles, obviously. We have the San Francisco International Film Festival in April, which is our flagship. And then, obviously, now we’re a decade into a documentary film festival in the fall, so they kind of anchor us in both seasons. My background is in documentaries. I worked on documentaries and have a long history of curating and supporting documentaries. And so it’s something that I’m very passionate about and there is always a wealth of documentaries. There’s far more films to be celebrated than we ever had the space for because it is a very specific set weekend of films where we don’t counter program. And the whole point is to be able to come and be able to really digest and take a look at the films that are selected to be a part of the lineup and filmmakers get to go see one another’s work, which is something that’s quite rare when you go to festivals.

And it allows the audience the chance to really walk away and then come back, and we have people that come to four screenings in a day, or will try to make it every single day during the four days that our event is going on. So it’s an opportunity to deep dive. I think there’s also something really important about what’s happening in the Bay Area that plays a part of that and was one of the reasons why Doc Stories has been so successful. 10 years is not a long period of time for a festival, but to have survived and to have emerged just as resilient and just as strong through the changes that we’ve been through over the last few years, I think speaks to the specificity of what happens in the Bay Area. We have this incredible ecosystem.

I’ve talked about this in a couple of places, but something that was really notable to me when I moved here, having worked in Chicago and New York and LA, was that, oh, there are these schools here that have these world-famous programs to study film and journalism and media, and all of those individuals, those people that are going through those programs are coming out.

And then there are so many different incubators and places that really celebrate nonfiction storytelling here in the Bay Area, whether it’s ITVS or Catapult Films or BAVC or our organization, SFFILM, with our artist development program, who really support filmmakers at the beginning of their career. And then we have so many documentary filmmakers who live here, and as a byproduct of that, we also have an incredible amount of ampas voters here in the Bay Area. And so all of that creates this mixing pot where there’s constantly dialogue and films in production, specifically in documentary, I mean there’s production happening year round in all genres and in all spaces, but documentary has a pretty big stronghold here in the Bay Area. And so it’s a really exciting time to be here. You’re always running into individuals who are… You’ve got Pete Nicks and you’ve got Jon Else and you’ve got Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen, and you just have a lot of luminaries who are in the non-fiction space.

And so everyone has been incredibly generous with us. I think the documentary community recognizes the value of a really prominent documentary specific showcase in the fall season where that’s the focus, that’s the dialogue, that’s what we’re doing. We’re talking about that area of the landscape. And so they show up, they come to the brunches, they come to the Q&As, they show up at the receptions. It’s a small community, as you know. Everyone is friends and they love gathering. And then we have this really lovely thing where people come to Doc Stories and then they all go to these coasts and they go to Doc NYC, and it’s this really fun three week kind of period where everyone gets to reconnect and have a reunion.

EA: I want to close in talking a little bit about the flagship, about SFFILM Festival. The edition earlier this year saw some pretty big differences from previous years; shorter, different venues, the loss of the Castro Theater as a main venue and in a post-pandemic world, festivals have had to evolve very quickly. What is your hope and future for SFFILM Festival and are your parameters for success different than they were before?

AL: I don’t know that the parameters of success are different. I think that we are putting sort of our priorities in a specific place. And so every performing arts and film festival organization absolutely went through so much change and we were in dialogue with all of them, like, how are you dealing with vaccinations? All of the things. And what was exciting for us for this past edition in 2024 was we did want to try a different footprint, as it were, in terms of theater. The Castro is offline. It’s still going to be offline for us next year. That still remains something we feel hopeful and excited about, but we also understand when it’s not available to us, it’s not available to us. So it was a deliberate and intentional move towards the Presidio and the Marina. One of the things that I was particularly excited about when I first moved here is we live in this amazingly beautiful place with some of the most iconic landscapes, but also some of the most beautiful spaces.

And so, as the city was going through lots of different changes, how would you create an environment that is prioritizing the experience for the audience where they might be a track put on your pants, go out the door, go do something, but encourages you to go see multiple things. It’s the thing that you want to have at a festival. How are we prioritizing our filmmakers where maybe pre-pandemic, we were in lots of different places throughout the city, if we centralize a little bit more, which we did over this past year with the Presidio and the Marina. Does it allow actually filmmakers to run into each other, to see each other’s films and have an experience that is really what it should be? So in order to be able to do that, how do we concentrate what that footprint is? And we experimented with doing a five-day version.

I do think it kind of scared a lot of people, which is like, is that forever? It’s like, no, this is the time to try stuff. Let’s see what that looks like. And one of the things that was of most interest to us is to see how our audience is going to make choices and compete against making decisions. FOMO is always the thing that will happen at a festival. What was interesting for us, and I would say this became a barometer for success, is what is attendance looking like? And we had very high attendance in ’23, I think we had an average capacity of maybe something like 87% and we’re like, let’s see if we can achieve that. But in this more compressed footprint, and we exceeded that, we got to 94% capacity, which is nuts. It’s great. And it’s also like, oh, we need to give more.

We should have more. We are expanding back to an 11-day profile in 2025. We’ll be in April again. And our goal is to remain in that northern Presidio Marina footprint. And one of the things that we are trying to continue to do is just what would it look like as we… Can we build a little bit more breathing room in there and really, again, prioritize what is the experience for the audience, what is experience for the filmmakers? And what was nice to see in that compressed experimental footprint in ’24 was no one wanted to leave. Everyone had a really good time, particularly filmmakers that were traveling and here for the first time, really, really experiencing each other, being around each other and really going to see film after film, which is exactly what we want to be able to have. So, I think every year is a little bit of a new experiment. And I will say this, as we touch wood, it does feel like, okay, we have the ability, let’s put a little muscle back on and re-expand it. And that’s how we’re heading into 2025.

EA: I have to say, I loved this last edition so much. I loved the new venues and location change, just giving people an entirely different part of the city, different walkability. I’ve been going to SFFILM film for a really long time. The energy was so different and really positive. It was a really good vibe.

AL: Well, that’s so good to hear. It’s so good to hear. And we do it not to neglect other neighborhoods that we love and other things, but it was, you got to pick a little bit in there, but that’s helpful. And I’m glad you said walkable because that was also the other goal. It’s like, can you go get a coffee between things? Can you grab a bite to eat? And it’s so quotidian, but as we all know, because we’ll professionally go to festivals, actually grabbing a bite to eat and taking a breather or sitting outside and chatting with someone is part of the experience, so how can we find the best possible environment for it? So that’s really great. Fingers crossed.

EA: Definitely. Jessie I want you to be able to chime in here.

JF: I think this will be my fifth festival in 2025. And everyone has been full of different unique opportunities to come up with some creative problem solving. As a curator, obviously, it is always very exciting to have more room to stretch your muscles and include more titles and create different types of thematics and present, like Anne said, do more. We want to present more engaging, independent, international, challenging, rigorous, inspirational content to our audience. There’s a very sophisticated audience here in the Bay Area and they rely on our organization for international and independent film. The exhibition landscape, as we all know, is going through a lot of changes. And so something that has been really important to me since I came here was that I wanted something, a concentration, having that sense of celebration, being visible. And so it’s really lovely to hear that resonated with you.

And so we’re just kind of, we have our heads down right now and my team is working hard and we’ve been obviously inviting and working on titles since the last festival wrap. So we are already well underway and have a fair amount of films already confirmed and are going to continue to be working really hard over the next few months to finalize and looking forward to both continuing elements that we are known for, such as the Golden Gate Awards, where we recognize new directors, where we recognize world cinema. We have our Cine Latino program. We are going to be bringing back Midlinks, which we’ve been celebrating in certain iterations and versions for several years that we had to put on hold last year. So we’re really excited to have that back. I am really proud of work that we’ve been doing in the shorts area for the last two years.

We have some really intuitively strong curators working on that. And so I’m looking forward to giving those back as well as the Persistence of Vision Award and the Novikov Award for Mila Novikov, our big nights and our galas. And then, where do we play? Where can we find things that are really fun? Where can we do things that are either reaching back into the legacy of the vault of SFFILM or looking at someone’s body of work or something completely unexpected that we need a larger footprint to be able to do that. And so we’re really excited and are working on baking some of those things, those ideas up and excited to present them in March.

EA: I love it. I can’t wait to see what it looks like.

JL: As Anne said, fingers crossed.

EA: Yeah, tap wood, cross fingers, all the things. Anne, Jessie, thanks so much this morning for chatting. I loved it.

JF: Thank you.

EA: I look forward to seeing you guys very soon in person.

AL: I’m sure we’ll see each other a bunch and thank you. And thank you for asking such great questions.

JF: Yeah, thank you for the support and the interest, Erik. It means a lot and good luck. I know you’re busy.

EA: As are you. It never ends!

JF: No, but we love it.