President of the Board Ernesto Paredes highlighted the festival’s new 5-plex film center in downtown Santa Barbara that represents a significant investment in the future of the festival and the community's artistic vibrancy, as well as in the revitalization and beautification of downtown. The McHurley Film Center will be a state-of-the-art cinema that will allow SBIFF to expand their year-round programming of independent, foreign, documentary, retrospective and family-friendly films, to grow educational programs and offer greater accessibility to the community.

Executive Director Roger Durling took the stage to commend Cynthia Erivo’s incredible transformative power as a performer. Starting with her role as Celie in The Color Purple, Roger said seeing her “was like witnessing a hurricane” and he was “in awe of her strength, her beauty and her expressiveness… Knowing I had witnessed something historic – not just a great performance – but the birth of a star like I’d never seen before.” Guests saw clips of her performances from Widows to Bad Times at the El Royale, to Harriet, Poker Face, Pinocchio and Genius: Aretha. Transitioning to Cynthia’s work this year in Wicked: For Good, Roger congratulated Cynthia for her inspiring performance in one of the most challenging, complex and compelling characters cinema has given us. 

The show featured a speech by Tony, BAFTA, and Emmy-award winning producer Marc Platt who celebrated Cynthia’s outstanding filmography, who noted that they couldn’t move forward with making Wicked until they found their Elphaba. “Thank Oz for Cynthia Erivo!”

Jon M. Chu, award-winning film director, presented Cynthia Erivo with this year’s Kirk Douglas Award. He spoke about how she “makes the impossible feel inevitable” as he celebrated Cynthia Erivo’s continued dedication to artistry and achievement in film. “This is my sister. My defiant, brilliant, bad-ass witch. But she’s not mine, she belongs to herself. I am only the witness with a very expensive camera,” Chu praised. “She loves humanity even when humanity doesn’t know what box to put her in because she’s bigger than the box. Some would say she defies gravity.”

Cynthia Erivo accepted the award, saying “Thank you to the Santa Barbara Film Festival for this extraordinary honor, and all of you in this room for contributing to education programs that will continue to inspire the next generation of film artists. We need them. … When I think of the last recipients, I realize I am still a student, and I will continue to be as time goes by because art does that. I thank you for this because it reminds me, yes, of how far I’ve come, but also how much more I have to go. And this is a beautiful pit stop along the way. So thank you, thank you to my entire team, and thank you again to Santa Barbara Film Fest for this lovely recognition.”

The room boasted a full house including SBIFF board members, donors, filmmakers and special guests. Since 2006, the annual Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film has been awarded to a lifelong contributor to cinema through their work in front of the camera, behind, or both. Past honorees include Will Ferrell, Ryan Gosling, Michelle Yeoh, Martin Scorsese, Hugh Jackman, Dame Judi Dench, Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda, Jessica Lange, Forest Whitaker, Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, Quentin Tarantino, Ed Harris, and John Travolta.