THE BUZZ: Behind the Scenes:
Exploring the San Diego International Film Festival

By Cory Jones

December 3, 2024

I was thankfully given a brief introduction to the film festival world as I met the wonderfully charming and astute CEO of the San Diego International Film Festival. The Best Little Film Festival in Southern California. You honestly can’t beat it for the money these days. You really can’t – and it’s all thanks to the deliberate efforts of Ms. Tonya Mantooth.

I am a film critic, not by trade but just because I know when I like something. But aren’t we all a little bit critics? We go to movies, or now we can stream almost any movie we want, whenever we want on the flix or Max or Hulu or the next best boe-bibity-flim-flamity-floppity app thingy.

Has going to the movies lost it’s cachet? I don’t know, that will be for these younger generations to decide. I still like going into a theater and watching a movie on a big screen that is larger than my living quarters, scarfing down some popcorn that doesn’t come out of a microwaved bag and sipping on a soda pop like when I was a kid, listening to booming sound effects, but also where the size of the screen really pulls you into the film setting.

That. That is what transforms you. You may feel like you’re in a distant land, say the beautiful Kashmir Valley between India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and China, or perhaps the gorgeous coastline of the Black Sea in Bulgaria sipping some coffee or tea from a quaint little shop that sometimes has a bit of nightlife, or perhaps you just feel like you’re in a little diner with your parents who complain about how much everything costs these days.

Real movies at real theaters can make you feel like you’re right there in the action.

So, does the San Diego Film Festival rival other festivals, like Cannes, Tribecca, South By Southwest, Toronto, or Sundance?

As a self-declared movie-critic, I can truly say it’s well on it’s way. It’s got a red carpet, it’s got movie panels, It’s got real actors roaming around in the theaters. You know, it’s pretty cool when you have the opportunity to see a film that is not released for distribution and you realize that the group of people that excused themselves to get to the seats across from you, are all in the movie that you all just sat down to watch. This happened countless times in my trek at the festival. You can shake their hands, or give them a high five after, and express your true appreciation for their work. You will feel like you’re talking with a real person and not some hollow shell of an ego that thinks they walk on water. I’m not saying that Hollywood all thinks that, probably, maybe, just like 99.9% of them.

At the panel on movies created by women, these creators covered critical topics including breast cancer, gender identity, suicide and depression. Topics that cut to the heart of things that truly matter to people, not the topics that we’re spoon-fed every day to distract us from our lives.

Julia Comita (pictured second from the left in the image above), a photographer and director based in New York City, has been developing films on breast cancer and beauty. Her film Marks of Majesty was shown at SDIFF, addresses breast cancer.

“I am interested in doing personal projects that are social impact related… This particular (story) happens to be a ‘pre-vivor,’ someone who got preventative double mastectomy surgery with a rare complication that caused her to undergo many reconstructions – she felt that her story wasn’t being covered… and she wanted to collaborate with a photographer after her upcoming surgery to tell what she calls the messy truth about the healing process. Hearing that I thought, ok… there has to be more stories like this to tell. … Stories that we don’t always hear about breast cancer.”

Melissa Fischer (pictured above, holding the microphone), is an LA based writer/director. Buscando Alma was shown at SDIFF, won the Oscar qualifying jury award at the Out-On Film Festival in Atlanta. She worked as the camera PA on Michael Bay’s Pain and Gain to camera Assist on La La Land to running the camera department on TV shows like Glow and The Dropout. In addition to that, she has made several short films.

“My journey with Buscando Alma is a concept that occurred to me when I heard a podcast about Andy Marra. And her journey is similar to what we talk about in Buscando Alma. She was adopted from Korea… and she travels back to Korea to meet her birth family, but similarly, in our movie, she has transitioned. How to meet your family after twenty years and that desperation to be loved and accepted by your parents but grappling with ‘how do I present myself?’ … It struck me in an emotionally provocative way… These issues, trans-gender issues, and cross-border issues, there’s such a sense of antagonism in our society right now, … and I just wanted to showcase our character as very human and I wanted to bring empathy to that.”

Eileen Burn, born in Luxemburg, started writing and directing movies as a teenager. Studied at the University of Winchester (UK), theater, music and art history at the University of Television and Film in Munich, Germany and a masters in film directing at the Toulouse Flim School in France. Her first feature film The Mariana Trench, based on the novel by Jasmin Schreiber screened at SDIFF.

“This novel was presented at the Berlin film festival in 2020, I read the first ten pages and I told my manager, ‘you have to get this novel!’ … the way I see life, it’s never just black and white, it’s always in a grey area. It can be in the saddest moments and still there’s something to love about life. … My mother lost her best friend to cancer. My father lost his best friend to cancer. My best friend lost her mother to cancer. It was all around me. People grieving and also my godfather lost his son. And they were all grieving in very different ways. This is what I recognized in this novel. Grief is such a huge topic and everyone does it in his own way. Some people close up. Some people have to talk. Some people cry a lot. And it’s O.K. That’s what kind-of really made me want to tell this story.”

I also had the opportunity to meet people with real stories to deliver, and when you talk about films, that’s what it’s really about. It’s about creating a discussion of important events in other people’s lives, it’s about discussing issues that are affecting other people that walk this planet with us, it’s about really digging in the vagaries, both tragedies and happy endings of life itself.

When I spoke with the CEO, Ms. Tonya Mantooth, a bit before the festival and she had the following to say about the spectacular event:

CJ: Can you give us a little bit of information about your background and how got involved in the San Diego Film Foundation and the International Film Festival?  

Tonya Mantooth (TM): So my background is that I’ve been a long-time producer in San Diego and I had a big production company here and the majority of it was focused on commercial productions. We worked with big ad agencies on the east coast – brought them out here and did their campaigns and we also had an entertainment division and we would do some pilots and different things – And from that, I started producing a couple kind-of low-budget independent films as well as documentaries. So, I come from more of a for-profit environment – and so in 2012, several colleagues and I were approached to come in and take over the San Diego Film Festival – and we all came from different backgrounds and because I came from a production side, I was positioned as a sort-of artistic director and now I am operating as the CEO of the organization. That’s how I came to be involved and like I said, I came from a for-profit environment and I really saw the festival as an economic driver for a City, but then to kind-of immerse myself into the films and the topics and the incredible work being done around the world. And then it became more of a kind-of a calling to tell important social issues. And I let the festival be that platform for independent film makers.

CJ: Right! So, I’m a little bit of a fish out of water here because I don’t have a background – necessarily in theater or film, my background is I’m a civil engineer. But, I enjoy getting out and seeing a variety of shows, whether it’s theater, music or art galleries. And I’m learning more for the other side of my brain. I noticed that this year you are celebrating the Power of film. And as an Engineer, I think of power as work divided by time. You know, people refer to “horsepower,” so I was wondering if this year to represent this power, are you planning to use a bunch of horses to represent the power driving the film industry or am I just way off here?

TM: I love that analogy. And I think that’s really apropos. I think there’s a power in film that doesn’t exist any place else. I think it’s the only medium that allows you to walk in someone else’s shoes and understand things from their perspective. And I think, once you do, the ability to have a sense of empathy and compassion, there’s a power to that. And I think the other piece where there’s a power the collective experience of watching film together. Because when you watch a film on your couch or you can sit in a dark room surrounded by 15, or 20 or 100 people, and experience it all at the same time. That is an energy and a power that doesn’t exist any place else.

CJ: How do you go about selecting films? Is there a jury of folks on the board that review something like 3,200 films that are considered and I forget the number that your group wheedles it down to…

TM: Yeah, I think we went down to a hundred. So, that was the fun process.

CJ: Do you watch these in double-time? I know that when I’m watching things [e.g. instructional how-to videos] on YouTube, I always speed it up to get through things faster.

TM: Well, the process we take is pretty intricate and we open submissions in January. So, as soon as we close the Festival and wrap, we immediately start preparing for the next one. What happens is, we have probably several hundred individuals who submit to be screeners and we cull it down to probably like sixty that we choose. So, they’re watching films as they come in. And then I have a film office and we’re analyzing the films that are hitting the bigger film festival circuit. And we’re selecting films out of that.

…

Then programmers make their recommendations to me, and from that I curate the overall slate.

I have to look at what’s the overall tone of the festival regarding the themes coming out of the festival and what’s the message that I want to deliver. So, you know, it definitely takes a village to do it.

CJ: Thank you for explaining that process. There were a number of things that you lead me to think about there. You mentioned [the different movie categories that you screen] documentaries, features, foreign, or shorts, are there other categories that you figure into your analysis?

I did see that there’s been two kinds of diversifications over the past several years, there’s inclusion of Native Americans in an advisory board and there was kind-of a merger, I don’t know if that’s the right term, with a Women’s Film Festival. So, is that another part of the analysis, the calculus of selecting your films?

TM: You know, we have over the years – I focused on a number of different genre of films and Native American films – definitely that, with a last name of Mantooth – my dad is Native American – I thought it was always really important to highlight the struggles that people find on tribal lands. We associate only things like Casinos with the Native Americans, but there’s a whole different world going on – on the reservations. That was something really important to highlight.

And letting women filmmakers (showcase their work) also was very key for me. It was in 2022, that I was approached by Women’s Museum of California who had a Women’s Film Series which I was very supportive of. And they said, let’s combine forces and so we pulled the film series into the film festival. Each year, I go through the films and determine which ones I want to be considered and then their board Chair, their executive director and I make the decision on who gets that designation. We really want to highlight and showcase the work of women.

CJ: Another area that I’ve worked on a lot in the past is sustainability and climate change. Is that another focus area as well?

TM: It absolutely is. It’s interesting because I have a film this year, and it’s kind-of a funny title, it’s the untold story of migratory shore birds, which seems pretty humorous, – what’s fascinating about it is the fact that these migratory birds are reflecting what’s happening in the climate.

CJ: Are we talking about … the seagulls?

TM: It’s that, but it’s all the migratory birds. – What it is is, it’s kind-of the, sorry for the pun, but they’re kind-of the Canary in the Coal Mine – in fact, they cannot continue to migrate because of change in climate that starts to shift the whole ecosystem. If we’re not looking at what’s happening with those birds, we’re missing a big piece – it’s kinda like the loss of the bee population.

It’s a cascading effect.

So, environmental sustainability has always been a big issue that we wanted to explore.

CJ: So is there a ratio of independent versus mainstream films that you shoot for? 

TM: You know, usually we’ll highlight probably 10 films that come out as studio releases with major distributors and then the rest of the films will be independent films.

CJ: Ok, so like 90 independent films. That’s pretty good. 

Do you have a specific theme for this year? Is that “Celebrating the Power of Film?”

TM:  Well that has been a theme for us for a couple of years. You know, I think if there’s a theme that has kind of emerged, there’s a couple of topics that we’ve chosen to focus on. One of them is, being in San Diego, one thing that doesn’t get celebrated enough, is the incredible advances in research in the life sciences. We may know a little about it here in San Diego, but we’ve been highlighting that we’ve been partnering with organizations that do cancer research that help foster that discussion. And this year, we’ll be highlighting something about some more incredible research that’s being done. And so I think that’s important. And the other theme that’s kind of emerged is the issue around trauma and suicide rates for first responders which I don’t think many people realize. They have one of the highest suicide rates, because they never get a break from the trauma. This film follows five different teams across the country as they explore and open up about what they have faced and what they have done to kind of rebuild their lives. That has been an interesting issue to sort of – trauma has been definitely emerging.

CJ: Does the festival have an overarching mission or vision? I see the tag line [on the logo here],” Films that inform, Films that inspire, Films that entertain.”

TM: You are correct, that is our tag line. But our mission is really our mission statement, buried somewhere on the website, and we wrote this in 2016 when and actually it applies more today than it did then, we live in divided times and there are so many things that divide us, and it can be sex, gender, wealth, housing, medical, all those things. And there’s one thing that we share and that’s shared humanity. And with that is a place where we can kind of come together and find a common purpose.

We can have the conversation. Our mission has always been to bring people together – and bridge the divide and not increase the divide. So, the programming will never be accusatory towards one side or another – it will be films that are thought provoking but also allow for both sides to say – I see it differently – and that’s that power of perspective to look at things a little differently – as you did when you walked in that woman’s shoes.

CJ: Yeah. I like the expression building bridges. I’ve only designed one bridge in my tenure. It was a pipe bridge just for a pipeline. What’s a pipe bridge? It’s just a bridge that holds a pipe across a ravine perhaps.

TM: Wow. You know what? You didn’t even think about those things. That is highly necessary.

CJ: Some liquids require gravity to flow, and you can’t just go around a stream or a river, you still have to go across it anyways, it wasn’t as life concerning as traffic bridges, so I was okay with that one.

So does the festival have any particular goal or role in shaping careers of filmmakers?

TM: For the film festival? So, the role we feel is our responsibility, is to be able to provide for filmmakers the ability to sell their films. And what that means is to be able to foster relationships with distributors, for them to come and to watch the films at the festival. Engage [in] a relationship with the filmmakers and give them a chance to be able to sell their films. That’s one of the most challenging parts of filmmaking, is you finish the film and what do I do with it next? And that’s a role for a film festival, and that’s something we take very seriously and we are actively working to bring distributors in order to foster those relationships.

And what it means back to the city is for $1 of every festival budget, it’s $10 back to the city. So if you have a budget like Tribeca, Tribeca brings $120,000 to the city every single year. So that’s significant. And so those are the designations that I want to get and continue getting.

When I spoke to Lapke Sherpa, a woman who has climbed Mt. Everest ten times, she explained to me:

LS: I love hiking. I’m a nature lover. I live in a very remote valley in the Himalayas. I learn in the mountains, very much. Here children go to college, you know, the lawyer and the actors. I learn my job in the mountain area.”

CJ: Hiking a mountain may be like a jig-saw puzzle trying to find the right route to the top. Does the mountain speak to you?

LS: People is scared – the mountain. But here, job, everybody’s scared. I love the mountain. I love my kids. I really really trust this mountain very well.

CJ: I saw that you have a very high success rate for summiting Mt. Everest. Only a few times you had to camp and then head back down the mountain. I imagine the weather always changes.

LS: Yeah, the mountain is very difficult, but you must know the key. But you know, it’s just the mountain.

CJ: So, have you climbed much in California?

LS: I love, I love the Mount Whitney, very much!

When I spoke with the writer/director for the movie The Collaborator, Travis Hodgkins, I asked for a brief elevator pitch and he explained:

TH: Sure, it’s based on the novel by Mirza Waheed. It’s set in Kashmir in 1993. And it’s about a young boy who is recruited by the Indian army to go down to the valley where the conflict was occurring and to take ID cards from dead militants. Basically, it’s about what happens to his life when the Indian Army invades and is trying to stop the locals from being recruited to join the freedom forces who are trying to take Kashmir away from India. Some of his friends are recruited.

It’s a very complicated history, there’s a lot of complicated things happening. We wanted to focus on, like the novel does, on the boy, his family and immediate friends. What are the ramifications that happen to all of them? And basically at the end, we wanted to show that his decision not to join any one side. To be a witness to what was happening over there. We wanted to have a message of non-violence and peace.

CJ: So, there’s a lot of push and pull, a lot of forces trying to get him to go different directions, as a growing kid, that’s always the case.

TH: Yeah, right, so now imagine you live in a conflict zone. You’re friends are saying ‘Let’s go over to this side and fight.’ You’re parents are staying over here and saying not to. Then the army comes in and says ‘no, you’re going to do this.’

CJ: How do you react to that? Yeah, there’s a lot of different conflict zones in the news media right now. So, I imagine there are a lot of kids in that same situation. Am I going to get pulled into this group or that group? Where do I really want to be? Where does my heart lie? How do I live like I want? These things are sometimes outside of my control.

TH: You’re young. You have hopes. You have dreams. You have aspirations. Then the real world starts to creep in. It starts to pull you in different directions. And to try and maintain a sense of self. And to try and still pursue your dreams but also do what you feel is responsible, right?

CJ: Yeah.

TH: It’s very difficult. Although it’s a story about Kashmir, we think it a story that relates throughout the world because there are conflicts all throughout the world. We spent some time in the country of Georgia, which is in conflict with Russia right now. And we had people from the Ukraine involved, who are also involved in their own conflict zone. The movie was presented at a festival in Israel and it was honored to be presented also at a festival in Turkey. You know they all recognize, the message in this movie is the message of non-violence and hope.

I saw this film and was moved to tears. The tragedy of being in a place of warfare where there are no really good sides to join is a reality that unfortunately we see many people facing these days. Not just in Kashmir or between other regions of India and Pakistan, but of course those events in the middle east and those other events in Ukraine. This is not a political magazine, so I’m leaving sides out of the discussion. The heart of the matter, is the fighting of disputes as brutes rather than as rational adults – and this is where being human still leaves us as part – animal, part- primal, part-irrational. Thus, we are not gods. We cannot escape these troubles of, this shape of humanity.

Another very cool thing that the SDIFF produced was a student art show. I had a quick minute with one of the organizers of the FOCUS on Impact Education Program as part of the film festival’s collaboration with San Diego Unified School District, San Diego County Office of Education, and San Diego Community College District.

FOCUS: This was the pilot program for an exhibit that connects with an education program that the SDIFF has. Students were asked to create issue-based work – to choose a topic that they felt strongly about. It created a persuasive art-piece about that issue. Then they were evaluated and we had 10 finalists selected and a winner’s art is on all of the merchandise that we see on sale at the festival.

CJ: So, how many entries did you have?

FOCUS: For the pilot, we had about 40 entries. It was just a couple of schools. Our aim is to open it up to San Diego Unified because we have that partnership with the film festival. Open it up to all middle- and high-schools next year. So, we expect to have a much larger collection of work to curate from.

CJ: How many judges did you have?

FOCUS: There were five of us on the panel. So, Tonya was included. They had the marketing director, myself and a couple other visual people with the film festival.

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Would I recommend this festival to anyone who has a few days to kick around watching movies? Yes.

Is it worth the money? Yes.

Is it cool? Yes.

Is it a place for real film critics and real Oscar nominated films? Maybe, I don’t work for the Oscars yet.

Now that I’ve talked you’re ears off about how great San Diego International Film Festival (#SDIFF) is, be sure to support their work, check it out next year if you missed it this year and go see some good movies San Diego!

Originally published at: https://vanguardculture.com/the-buzz-a-brief-introduction-to-film-at-the-san-diego-international-film-festival/