The Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s annual writers’ panel is consistently one of its most attended events—at least, according to Festival Director Roger Durling. He made this claim as he welcomed a packed house of at the Arlington Theatre in downtown Santa Barbara on Saturday, February 8.
Festivalgoers were treated to an exceptional discussion featuring “The Brutalist” co-writer Mona Fastvold, “Conclave” scribe Peter Straughan, “Sing Sing” co-writer Clint Bentley, “A Real Pain” writer-director Jesse Eisenberg, “Nickel Boys” co-writer Joslyn Barnes, and “September 5” writer-director Tim Fehlbaum. Hosted by IndieWire’s Anne Thompson, the panel opened with clips from each of the panelists’ films before diving into a conversation with these Academy Award-nominated screenwriters.
“Sing Sing,” which earned an Academy Award nomination for its star Colman Domingo along with Best Adapted Screenplay, is based on the true story of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program at New York’s Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison. Co-writer Bentley emphasized that no amount of research could truly capture the transformative power of the program. To ensure authenticity, he and his team sought input from formerly incarcerated individuals.
“We went in, got to know the guys, became volunteer teachers, and led a workshop inside a maximum-security prison,” Bentley explained. “We would have these profound experiences, learn so much about their lives, and then return to the script—only to find that it never quite captured the magic we’d witnessed.”
During filming, Bentley and director Greg Kwedar realized that the actors’ performances often surpassed what was on the page. “We got to one scene where no words could encapsulate what the character was going through,” Bentley recalled. “So, we threw out the writing. It’s funny—you work so hard on a scene, think it’s great, and then the actors find a better way to convey it without a single line.”
For “A Real Pain,” Jesse Eisenberg drew inspiration from his own family while crafting a fictional narrative.
“A lot of the stories in the movie come from my family, but they’re slightly tweaked,” Eisenberg shared. “The character of my grandmother is based on my Aunt Doris. She was this incredibly tough mentor in my life. Her survival story in the film is actually my cousin Maria’s story. It was about staying loyal to real experiences while shaping them into something new.”
Originally, Eisenberg envisioned himself playing Benji, the film’s co-lead, but the role ultimately went to Kieran Culkin, who has since received an Oscar nomination for his performance. It took Eisenberg a few days into production to recognize that Culkin’s portrayal exceeded his own expectations.
“I realized this was better,” Eisenberg admitted. “Kieran has this incredible ability to make the audience love him, then not love him, then love him again. It was pure instinct on his part—we never discussed it. And that instinct made the film warmer, more accessible, and more inviting.”
The conversation turned to Mona Fastvold, co-writer of “The Brutalist,” whose production faced delays due to the COVID pandemic and subsequent industry strikes. Asked how these disruptions impacted the film, Fastvold reflected on its naturally expansive narrative.
“It always felt like a long story,” started Fastvold. “I also felt very compelled not to hold back with this particular story. I said to Brady I don’t want to think as a producer when we’re writing this and to just let the story take us in the direction it wants to take us.”
Joslyn Barnes, co-writer of the Oscar-nominated “Nickel Boys,” spoke about adapting Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. She and director RaMell Ross made a conscious decision to avoid depicting violence on screen.
“One of the first things that we decided was we didn’t want to have any onscreen violence because we do not want to unintentionally reinscribe the imaging of black people and the bodily abuses that this larger community has been so closely identified with, across the news and historically,” recounted Barnes. “By allowing the audience to rely on their own imaginative capacity they could fill in the blanks and it would be, in some ways, more visceral for you.”
It’s a similar sentiment shared by “September 5” co-writer Tim Fehlbaum, who appeared on stage without his co-write Moritz Binder, who was seated front row in the audience. Fehlbaum and his former college buddy researched the events of the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics to tell the story of the Israeli team taken hostage and murdered in the Olympic Village from every angle. But, ultimately, once they met with producer Geoff Mason, who orchestrated the first live coverage of a terrorist plot unfolding, they decided to focus solely on the role of the media.
“We originally planned to tell the story from multiple angles, like Moritz [Binder] and myself were quite broadly researching what happened on that day and were telling it actually from the police side and political side,” explained Fehlbaum. “I realized in the process that I wouldn’t feel confident telling the story about it where we would have been speculating, and that is something we that we didn’t want to do.”
Peter Straughan, the writer of Conclave, based on Robert Harris’ novel, rounded out the discussion. Straughan emphasized the importance of silence in shaping the film’s most powerful moments, particularly those involving Isabella Rossellini’s character, a quiet yet commanding nun.
“We really wanted to lean into it by showing the silent nuns,” added Straughan. “I think one of the reasons why Isabella’s speech is responded to in the way it has been is because it was a sort of wound up silence until she goes off, and it’s really an example of the importance of silence.”
The panel left festival attendees with a deeper appreciation for the creative choices and thoughtful storytelling that shaped these Oscar-nominated films, proving once again why the SBIFF writers’ panel remains a festival highlight.