With its sixteenth year looming just around the corner, officials from the Santa Fe International Film Festival this week announced that the fest has officially been recognized by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences as an Oscar qualifying event, meaning that forthcoming winners of the Best Animated Short, Best Narrative Short and Best Documentary Short categories at SFIFF will be eligible to submit for Academy Award consideration.
"Some festivals get approved just for their animation or just their documentaries, and we'll have all three," SFIFF co-founder and Artistic Director Jacques Paisner tells SFR, adding that the new designation will likely lead to even more film submissions for future fests. "We got over 4,000 submissions for 2024, so I think we can expect 6,000 or 7,000 for 2025."
This year’s Santa Fe International Film Festival (formerly Independent Film Festival) kicks off Wednesday, Oct. 16 with a screening of Malcolm Washington’s debut, The Piano Lesson. The fest runs through the week across various Santa Fe theaters and is slated to screen 184 films across full-lengths, shorts, indies, docs, narrative features and more. The fest will also feature the panels, parties and gatherings for which events of its ilk are known. The programming itself is shaping up to be some of of SFIFF’s biggest and best, according to Paisner, and will include screenings of Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain starring Eisenberg and Succession alum Kieran Culkin; Oscar-winner Andrea Arnold’s Bird with Saltburn star Barry Keoghan; and Oscar-nominated director RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys based on the Pulitzer-winning Colson Whitehead book—plus many more.
2024 has already been a big year for SFIFF before a single curtain rises. Just last month, the nonprofit Santa Fe Film Institute that presents the festival granted $25,000 to up-and-coming filmmakers in the area—a program it offers every year. Also notable, Breaking Bad actor Bryan Cranston will receive the SFIFF Lifetime Achievement Award at a 7 pm ceremony on Saturday, Oct. 19 at the Lensic Performing Arts Center alongside a discussion with writer Kirk Ellis and a screening of the 2015 film Trumbo about Roman Holiday screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. Previous winners have included actor Tantoo Cardinal (Cree Métis and Nakota), Reservation Dogs creator Sterlin Harjo (Seminole), director Oliver Stone and legendary actress Shirley MacLaine among others.
"I just want to give it up to the team of people who put on the fest each year," Paisner adds. "It stretches all the way from the board and the staff to the the volunteers, the interns—there are a lot of great people dedicated to the vision of what we’re doing."
SFIFF also recently announced its full 2024 lineup of official selections on its website.
