Santa Barbara Film Festival Releases Its 2013 Slate of Films

Santa Barbara Film Festival LogoThe Santa Barbara International Film Festival previously announced Disconnect as the festival’s opening night screening and Wasteland as the film tapped to close out the 2013 event. Now the festival’s released a list of the slate of films they’ll be screening during the festival’s January 24 – February 3 run.

Among this year’s selections are 13 world premieres and 32 films that will be holding their US premieres at Santa Barbara.

WORLD PREMIERES:

A Year in Burgundy
Directed by David Kennard
Cast: Martine Saunier
This documentary follows half a dozen wine makers in the Burgundy region of France for one full year, where the beautiful and traditional processes are revealed.

Blumenthal
Directed by Seth Fisher
Cast: Seth Fisher, Brian Cox, Fred Melamed, Laila Robins, Mark Blum, Mei Melancon
Celebrated playwright, Harold Blumenthal, has passed away after succumbing to cardiac arrest while laughing at his own joke. Now, Harold’s estranged and jealous brother, Saul, must confront his personal hang-ups in order to deliver himself from an epic bout of constipation.

Crosstown
Directed by Miriam Kruishoop
Cast: Manny Perez, Vivica A. Fox, Will Green, Noel Gugliemi, Paige Hurd
The promise of a better life is shattered when two families are confronted with the brutal reality of raising their children in Los Angeles. An undocumented immigrant family from El Salvador is forced to sign their 17 year-old son’s life away to the U.S. Military with the false promise of naturalization papers. The other family struggles to prevent a forbidden love affair between their Black teenage daughter and a recently initiated member of the local Salvadoran street gang.

Discovering Mavericks
Directed by Joshua Pomer
Director Josh Pomer captures insider interviews and more than three decades of images and footage to tell the true story of California’s most famous, and notorious, big wave.

Driftwood
Directed by Peter Trow, Jim Brewer
Cast: Shaun Tomson, Matt Becker, Genelle Ives, Joe Rowan, Sam George, Noah Yap, Ammy Naff, Jim Brewer
Narrated by surf legend Shaun Tomson, this beautiful and meditative stand-up paddle board excursion takes Sam George, Noah Yap, Ammy Naff and Jim Brewer through locations including Sri Lanka, Iceland, Colombia, USA, and Nova Scotia.

El Milagro
Directed by Salomón Shang
A Spanish film crew attempts to expose Peru’s El Milagro, where many children are forced to work in the local landfill amidst horrible health and environmental conditions.

Isolated
Directed by Justin Le Pera
Cast: Ryan Phillippe, Travis Potter
Five world class surfers travel to the journalist dead zone of New Guinea in search of undiscovered waves and find more than they bargained for.

It’s Better to Jump
Directed by Gina Angelone, Mouna B. Stewart, Patrick A. Stewart
It’s Better to Jump is a feature-length documentary film that gives voice to the people of the ancient walled city of Akka as they and their city face a very uncertain future.

Monster Squid: The Giant Is Real
Discovery Channel and NHK have joined forces to undertake the most ambitious search ever mounted to find the greatest mystery of the deep, the giant squid. With razor-toothed suckers and eyes the size of dinner plates, tales of the creature have been around since ancient times. The Norse legend of the sea monster the Kraken and the Scylla from Greek mythology might have derived from the giant squid. This massive predator has always been shrouded in secrecy, and every attempt to capture a live giant squid on camera in its natural habitat, considered by many to be the Holy Grail of natural history filmmaking, has failed. Until now.

Occupy the Movie
Directed by Corey Ogilvie
Featuring: Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Tim Pool
This film sheds a light on a movement known as Occupy who stands against corporate greed. Beginning in 2011, it has quickly become the largest movement since those of the civil rights protests.

Sex After Kids
Directed by Jeremy Lalonde
Cast: Paul Amos, Shannon Meckner, Katie Boland, Kristin Booth, Jay Brazeau
An edgy ensemble comedy about the sexual exploits couples share in the aftermath of children.

Stable Life
Directed by Sara MacPherson
A high-stakes documentary about family, immigration and the hardscrabble world of horse racing

The Signal Hill Speed Run
Directed by Jon Carnoy, Michael Horelick
Featuring: Ben Harper (narrator)
Narrator Ben Harper explores the history of the world’s first skateboard contest and the subsequent evolution of the daredevil speed run in the small So Cal burg of Signal Hill.

U.S. PREMIERES

About 111 Girls (Darbare 111 Dokhtar)
Directed by Nahid Ghobadi, Bijan Zamanpira
Cast: Reza Behbudi, Mehdi Saki, Amin Sadeghi
The Iranian president receives a pleading letter from 111 Kurdish women complaining of their inability to find husbands, and says that if the government does nothing, they will commit mass suicide.

Alaska Sessions: Surfing The Last Frontier
Directed by Frederick Dickerson, Matthew McNeill
Featuring: Mike McCune, Scott Dickerson, Ice Man (Don McNamara), Stephanie Dickerson, Donna Rae Faulkner, Wendy Kinnier McCune
A Homer Alaska local sells his house and buys an old fishing boat to embark on an epic surf adventure up the isolated Alaskan coastline — in the dead of winter

Autoluminescent: Rowland S. Howard
Directed by Richard Lowenstein, Lynn-Maree Milburn
Cast: Rowland S. Howard, Genevieve McGuckin, Nick Cave
From myth to legend Rowland Howard appeared on the early Melbourne punk scene like a phantom out of Kafkaesque Prague or Bram Stoker’s Dracula. A beautifully gaunt and gothic aristocrat, the unique distinctive fury of his guitar style shot him directly into the imagination of a generation.

Betrayal (Izmena)
Directed by Kirill Serebrennikov
Cast: Franziska Petri, Dejan Lilic
A man and a woman, two casual acquaintances, learn that their respective spouses are having an affair with each other in this intriguing drama.

Boucherie Halal
Directed by Babek Aliassa
Cast: Abdelghafour Elaaziz, Fariba Bonakdar, Karim Babin, Christine Aubin Khalifah
A Muslim couple opens a butcher shop in Montreal and wishes to successfully integrate into Quebec society. But the butcher’s father is an imam who sets up a little mosque in the back room and uses it to spread his fundamentalist views. When he is arrested by the RCMP on suspicions of past terrorist activities, his son, torn between love for his wife and allegiance to his father, gets involved in a plot to free him. Fed up by her husband’s unwillingness to stand up to his father’s wishes, the butcher’s wife leaves to live a more fulfilling life away from the muslim community.

Broken
Directed by Rufus Norris
Cast: Tim Roth, Cillian Murphy, Rory Kinnear
Skunk is only 11, but after witnessing a brutal beating, her childhood innocence gives way to fear and danger.

Chaika
Directed by Miguel Ángel Jiminez
Cast: Salome Demuria, Gio Gabunia
A love story between a prostitute and a sailor, reconstructed between two long seasons: the eternal winter of Siberia and summer in the dusty steppes of Kazakhstan.

Chocó
Directed by Jhonny Hendrix Hinestroza
Cast: Esteban Copete, Karent Hinestroza
A young, displaced black woman tries to maintain her two children and her husband, a musician who only knows how to play marimba, drink, and gamble.

Danube – Europe’s Amazon
Directed by Rita & Michael Schlamberger
Romantic coasts and unspoiled nature: the Danube fascinates. It dominates the landscape wherever it flows. The Danube unites and separates at the same time. In the Roman Empire – from its source to its estuary – it formed the frontier to the peoples of the North. Today the big stream flows through ten countries. 1071 kilometres of the Danube still represent national borders.

Family Meals
Directed by Dana Budisavljevic
Through the ritual of family meals, the film talks about the importance of feeling accepted by the ones we love.

Fly With The Crane, China
Directed by Li Ruijun
Cast: Xingchun Ma, Long Tang, Siyi Wang
Serenely resigned to his impending death but deeply afraid at the prospect of being cremated, an elderly carpenter seeks to have his last wishes carried out in this gentle, beautifully realized drama from director Li Ruijun

Handmade Cinema
Directed by Guido Torlonia
Featuring: Dante Ferretti, Francesca Lo Schiavo, Maurizio Millenotti, Gabriella Pescucci
Turning an actor into a character, sewing a precious dress or an antique pair of shoes as if they were art works, building a set but most of all painting it, aging it and making the stage designer’s sketch a beautiful reconstruction all this is Handmade Cinema.

High Plains Doctor: Healing on the Tibetan Plateau
Directed by Michael Oved Dayan
Featuring: Isaac Sobol
On a doctor’s philanthropic journey to give to the people of Tibet, he receives more than he could ever imagine.

Jackie
Directed by Antoinette Beumer
Cast: Carice van Houten, Jelka van Houten, Holly Hunter
Dutch twin sisters travel to America to help the mother (Holly Hunter) they have never met in this heartwarming, cross-cultural take on the classic American road movie.

Motorway
Directed by Pou-Soi Cheang
Cast: Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Shawn Yue
A young cop on Hong Kong’s top-secret, high-speed pursuit squad must learn the tricks of the trade from a grizzled veteran as he prepares to capture a legendary getaway driver in this high-octane thriller from action auteur Soi Cheang and legendary producer Johnnie To.

My Awkward Sexual Adventure
Directed by Sean Garrity
Cast: Jonas Chernick, Emily Hampshire, Vik Sahay
A sexually inept accountant strikes a deal with a worldly but disorganized stripper: he’ll help her with her crushing debt if she helps him become a better lover.

Old Stock
Directed by James Genn
Cast: Cameron Ansell, Ryan Blakely
Stock Burton (Noah Reid) is a local legend. A monumental event from his past has frozen
him, sent his family into a tailspin and pitted his small town against him. Now he’s simply chosen to drop out of life and ‘retire’, joining his recently separated Grandfather, Harold, (Jack Daniel Wells) at the Golden Seasons senior’s home, where life is safe, comfortable and worry free.

One Mile Above
Directed by Jiayi Du
A young man’s cycle journey to the highest point in Tibet to fulfill his brother’s final wish. Based on a true story.

Perú Sabe: Cuisine as an Agent of Social Change
Directed by Jesús M. Santos
Featuring: Gaston Acurio, Ferran Adriá
Ferran Adrià, one of the world’s most prestigious chefs, and Gastón Acurio, Latin America’s most influential chef, explore the roots of Peruvian cuisine and its potential to change lives.

Queen of Montreuil
Directed by Sólveing Anspach
Cast: Florence Loiret Caille, Eric Caruso
It’s early summer and Agathe is back in France, at home in Montreuil. She has to get over her husband’s death and return to her work as a film director. The unexpected arrival at her house of a couple of Icelanders, a sea lion and a neighbor that she has always desired yet never vanquished will give Agathe the strength to get her life back on track…

Revolution
Directed by Rob Stewart
Featuring: Rob Stewart, David Hannan, Boris Worm, Emily Hunter, Felix Finkbeiner
REVOLUTION is a film about changing the world, going for it, taking a stand, and fighting for something. A true-life adventure following Director, Rob Stewart (SHARKWATER) over four years and 15 countries discovering there is a lot more than sharks at risk of becoming extinct. Climate change, environmental degradation, species loss, ocean acidification, pollution, and food/water scarcity are reducing the earth’s ability to house humans and we need to start doing something about it now!

Storm Surfers 3D
Directed by Justin McMillan, Chris Nelius
Featuring: Tom Carroll, Ben Matson
This 3D cinematic adventure follows two of Australia’s greatest surf legends on their quest to hunt down and ride the Pacific’s biggest and most dangerous waves.

The Ballad of The Weeping Springs (Balada le’aviv ha’bohe)
Directed by Benny Toraty
Cast: Yigal Adika, Lirit Balaban, Asher Dagan, Yonatan Dani, Peri Bar Delshdefer
Amram, the son of Avraham Mufredi, turns up at the house of the legendary Persian tar (lute) player, Yosef Tawilla. Amram gives him the score of a work that his father, a member of Tawilla’s ensemble and his partner, wants to see performed before his impending death.

The Body
Directed by Oriol Paulo
Cast: José Coronado, Belén Rueda, Hugo Silva, Aura Garrido
A woman’s body vanishes from the morgue in mysterious circumstances. In the course of a single night, Inspector Jaime Peña investigates the disappearance with the help of her widower.

The Dealers
Directed by Oded Davidoff
Cast: Alon Aboutboul, Moshe Ashkenazi, Rami Davidoff, Abdallah El Akal
The story of Rami and Avishay, 27 years old friends that share an apartment in a small Jerusalem neighborhood. They spend their days smoking and playing in a soccer team with other losers, which its coach Zvika is determined to take the “Jerusalem neighborhood cup” with. In need for money they get entangled in a drug deal with Sagi, a local gangster, which forces them to learn the hard way about taking responsibility, loyalty, and friendship. The movie is a humorous view of the colorful, multi culture, unique and somehow funny Israeli society.

The Deflowering of Eva Von End
Directed by Michiel ten Horn
Cast: Vivian Dierickx, Rafael Gareisen
The outcast in her middle-class family, Eva’s life is turned upside down by the arrival of a handsome German exchange student in this satire of petit-bourgeois family life.

The Invisible String
Directed by Jan Bäss
Featuring: Chipper ‘Bro’ Bell, ‘Crazy’ John Brooks
Focusing on the 1970s and ‘80s, including vintage footage from Santa Barbara, this German documentary traces the rise in popularity of Frisbee contests, games and acrobatic exhibitions.

The Night Parade
Directed by Geraldine Maillet
Cast: Julie Gayet, Raphaël Peronnaz, Brisa Roché, Bakari Sangaré, Françoise Lebrun
Paris – One night. A woman and a man meet in a restaurant. Sheis beautiful. He falls for her. She is shy, he is bewitched. He talks, she is cautious. He tries, she avoids. She hesitates, he insists. An intense relationship starts then. During the night, masks fall off and the seduction game gives in to sincere feelings. Will this love last over a night ?

The Precocious and Brief Life of Sabina Rivas (La vida precoz y breve de Sabina Rivas)
Directed by Luis Mandoki
Cast: Greisy Mena, Fernando Moreno
Honduran teenager Sabina Rivas intends to get to the United States, harboring dreams of becoming a famous singer and distancing herself from her former lover, Jovany, now a gang member.

The Silent War
Directed by Felix Chong, Alan Mak
Cast: Xun Zhou, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Mavis Fan, Xuebing Wang, Yong Dong, Lap-Man Sin
An espionage thriller set in the 1950s and adapted from the novel “Year Suan/Plot Against” by May Jia. Tony Leung Chiu Wai plays a blind man who works for a piano tuner. He is recruited for a spy mission because of his exceptional hearing.

Wasteland
Directed by Rowan Athale
Cast: Matthew Lewis, Iwan Rheon
In this exhilarating heist thriller, a young ex-con hooks up with his best mates to embark on a wild — and risky — revenge scheme after being framed by a local drug kingpin.

Water
Directed by Mohammad Bakri, Ahmad Bargouthi, Mohammad Fuad, Tal Haring, Yona Rozenkier, Nir Saar, Maya Sarfaty, Pini Tavger
Nine directors, Israeli and Palestinian, embarked on a journey to create short films, fiction or documentary, inspired by Water. Water symbolizes the source of possibilities, the primal core of all things.

For the complete lineup and details on the festival, visit http://sbiff.org/

Source: Santa Barbara International Film Festival

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