At 11 a.m. on Feb. 15, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) presented their Women’s Panel on their final night.

A sunny early morning brought together an almost full theater to watch the 23rd Annual Women’s Panel at SBIFF. This year it was led by Madelyn Hammond. Sitting beside Hammond, was a group of six female producers, Paula DuPré Pesmen, Suchitra Mattai, directors, Emily Kassie, Smriti Mundhra, Victoria Warmerdam and songwriter, Diane Warren.

As Hammond jumped from person to person around the group, each woman individually talked about their process and inspiration behind their films.

Pesmen, who is the producer of “Porcelain War”, was first. She shared how she and her crew of all women smuggled cameras into Ukraine in order to film. Pesman explained how she wanted to capture the beauty the Ukrainian artists were so invested in. 

“Their whole focus was to film beauty,” Pesmen said. 

So that is exactly what she did in “Porcelain War”. She later brought her film to Sundance Film Festival, where she won the Grand Jury for United States Documentary in 2024.

Next up was Mattai, producer of “Anuja”, who went into depth about how she created her film in her living room in 2020 during Covid. The film follows two young sisters who work long hours in a garment factory in Delhi, India. Hammond and Mattai went back and forth discussing child labor.

“It’s almost half the population of the U.S,” Mattai said, which she finds to be absurd. 

She and her husband Adam Graves created this film together, with the help of their children as co-producers. Their film later got nominated for an Academy Award. 

Kassie then chimes in with her experience directing “Sugarcane”. She and Julian Brave NoiseCat worked as a team during the production of this film. Kassie proceeded to get passionate and emotional about the backstory of her film. She went on about the abuse of indigenous children by Catholic priests in schools in British Columbia and how their intentions were to “kill the indian, save the man” as Kassie said. She and her crew managed to sneak into the Vatican in Rome to film a specific scene. She mentioned how proud she was that she got to bring her film to The White House for a screening and later got her film nominated for an Oscar. 

After Kassie, it was Smitri Mundhra’s turn to share her film with the crowd. Mundhra is an oscar nominated director for the short film, “I Am Ready Warden”. Her film is based on a man named John Henry Ramirez who was a convicted murderer waiting on death row.

“I was struck by his sense of remorse,” Mundhra said, while diving into her experience speaking with him. 

Mundhra was able to find the son of the man that Ramirez had murdered, Aaron Castro and was slowly able to gain his trust over time. When Castro finally felt comfortable enough to join the making of the film, Ramirez’s time had run up and he was executed. When the film was finished, Mundhra had the opportunity to screen it at the San Quentin state prison for over 100 people and prisoners.

Warren was the only songwriter in the panel. She attended to share the song she had written for the film “The Six Triple Eight”, which she claims to be the one song she is most proud of. 

“I had chills all over and I had tears in my eyes,” Warren said, referring to the making of her song. 

In her songwriting career she has been awarded 16 oscar nominations and has written countless songs for other artists.

Lastly it was Warmerdam’s turn to discuss her process of making “I’m Not a Robot”. She shared how she struck up the idea for this film when she was tasked to complete the online “are you human” tests to detect AI and how she started pondering the question “What if I am a robot and what if I’m purchased by my partner?” She described her coming to a realization and the question of  “am I really a human? ” She shot the entire short on film instead of digitally and was able to turn the short film into a feature film which was later nominated for an Oscar. 

The women of the six Oscar nominated films being recognised at the SBIFF Woman’s panel, shared an in depth background of their filming process and walked the crowd through their journeys of film making.