Festivals - SBIFF 2022 : the Virtuosos Award night

By Mulder, Santa Barbara, Théâtre Arlington, 05 march 2022

The evening concluded with the presentation of and interviews with the recipients of the Virtuosos Award, an honor created to recognize a select group of talent whose noteworthy performances in film have elevated them into the national cinematic dialogue. Caitriona Balfe (Belfast), Ariana DeBose (West Side Story), Ciaran Hinds (Belfast), Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza), Emilia Jones (CODA), Troy Kotsur (CODA), Simon Rex (Red Rocket), and Saniyya Sidney (King Richard) discussed their work with Turner Classic Movies host and IMDb special correspondent host Dave Karger, who joined the conversation for his 11th year.

Alana Haim

- On driving the stick shift truck in the film: “You do not want me to teach you how to drive stick…I was a terrible driver so I really do appreciate Bradley Cooper and Cooper Hoffman for letting me almost kill them…they lived to tell the tale.”
- On her parents playing her parents in LICORICE PIZZA: “My parents are in the audience tonight…my dad should honestly be getting this award tonight, he’s actually the star of LICORICE PIZZA, so give it up for my dad!”

Caitriona Balfe

- On bonding with her Belfast co-stars: “I think each of us in our own way, it touches us as a family in a deep and personal place… from that first day we all met each other with open hearts and a real eagerness to get to know each other.”

Ciaran Hinds

- On working with Dame Judi Dench in Belfast: “She’s a hell of a rebel! That’s what makes her brilliant. ”
- On where BELFAST ranks in his 40+ years in film: “That’s a ridiculously hard question, thank you, Dave…I’ve had the great joy of working with extraordinary people like Steven Spielberg, Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorcese, I don’t know how I ended up there, it’s like I walk in the door and there I was.”

Emilia Jones

- On fangirling over Will Smith: “Honestly, he’s the most well groomed man I have ever laid eyes on…All I could think was ‘you must smell amazing because you look so gorgeous!”
- On learning ASL: “The first time I met Troy he was telling me dirty stories in ASL, he was teaching me all the swear words! I think that just made us bond really quickly...I’m so glad that I could hang out with them to really learn the language.”

Saniyya Sidney

- On meeting Venus Williams while filming King Richard: “It was probably three weeks into shooting and I was playing a nine-year-old Venus… she’s just full of life and she’s bubbly, and she just has this confidence to her that’s like when she walks in a room it just lights up the world. She’s literally Venus, she’s a goddess!”

Simon Rex

- On his unique experience shooting Red Rocket: “The movie was kind of chaos. Shooting during the pandemic, working with first time actors…the whole thing just almost didn’t even happen.The whole movie really happened as a happy accident…We didn’t have any permits, that’s why we weren’t eligible for SAG, it wasn’t a union film. It was just chaos but I think that worked to our advantage.”

Troy Kotsur

- On working with Marlee Matlin in CODA: “She was so fun to work with because we both had a mutual understanding of our art, our craft, honing our instrument, our language, and really we wanted to put our best performance in CODA, and we did.”
- On different accents in the deaf community and signing differently to play Frank than Troy would sign: “Believe it or not, hearing people in America have all different accents…and it’s just the same in sign language. We have regional accents in sign.”

Ariana Debose

On the need for more diversity in film: “Being a mixed chick…we don’t tell stories about being a mixed chick, especially mixed chicks from the south!”
On Steven Spielberg asking her to play Anita: “He asked me if I would be his Anita, which is a very important distinction to me. He invited me to be a part of the process as opposed to telling me what I’m gonna do, because I’m an Aquarius and I don’t like it when people tell me what to do!”

If you have missed this great panel , you can watch it here

Discover the official photos on our Flickr page