Wrap Notes: 2022 SFFILM Awards Night

Relive SFFILM Awards Night, from the red carpet glamour and awardees’ acceptance speeches to the success of our annual fundraising efforts.

On Monday, December 5 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), the sold-out 2022 SFFILM Awards Night commemorated some of the year’s most remarkable filmmakers, actors, and storytellers. This year, SFFILM honored the following visionaries:

• Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All At Once) — George Gund III Award: Breakthrough Performance
• Ryan Coogler (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) — Irving M. Levin Award for Film Direction
• Margot Robbie (Babylon) — Maria Manetti Shrem Award for Acting
• Sarah Polley (Women Talking) — SFFILM Award for Storytelling

The importance of what IndieWire has called “an awards stop on the road to the Oscars” is two-fold, relating to both SFFILM’s mission and the film industry at large. SFFILM is a nonprofit organization working to transform the world through the creativity and inspiration of film. We work to inspire and connect audiences, educate students and teachers, and support filmmakers at every stage of their careers. Our screening events, education initiatives, artist development programs, and more share contemporary film’s most essential works with audiences, and provide artists with a platform to elevate their projects.

All of this wouldn’t be possible without Awards Night, our organization’s most impactful annual fundraising event. “This evening of celebration not only honors the unique contributions of artists, but also fuels our ability to achieve our year-round initiatives of nurturing filmmakers, supporting students, and bringing audiences together through the transformative power of cinematic storytelling,” SFFILM’s Executive Director Anne Lai said of the event. “The impact of Awards Night is felt in every corner of our mission.”

Events like Awards Night have another goal, too: make Bay Area filmmakers, and the Bay Area film scene, an even more integral part of the film industry at large. “San Francisco now has a foothold in the awards season proper,” The Hollywood Reporter said of SFFILM Awards Night.

So, whether you joined in on the fun (and fundraising) in person, or caught highlights on our Instagram story, you can join us now in reliving 2022 SFFILM Awards Night.

Live From the Red Carpet

In true film fashion, Awards Night kicked off with a red carpet event. All of the awardees—Black Panther: Wakanda Forever director and writer Ryan Coogler; Babylon star Margot Robbie; Women Talking director and writer Sarah Polley; and Everything Everywhere All at Once co-lead Stephanie Hsu—stopped in to pose for photos and chat with members of the press.

 

Our awardees were joined on the carpet by the entertainment heavy-hitters who would later present them with their awards. The evening’s presenters included actor and playwright Danai Gurira (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever); actor Diego Calva (Babylon); the San Francisco Chronicle’s Senior Arts and Entertainment Editor, Mariecar Mendoza; and actor and filmmaker Joan Chen (Saving Face).

First to arrive were Hsu and Chen. When the two met on the carpet, Hsu thanked Chen for coming, sharing that she’d recently watched Alice Wu’s seminal Saving Face (2004), which, like Everything Everywhere All at Once, centers the relationship between a Chinese American mother and her queer daughter. Hsu referred to her experience with both of these films happening pretty serendipitously as a “real full-circle moment.”

Throughout the evening, the other stars stopped by the red carpet, too. Before stepping in front of the cameras, Ryan Coogler and Zinzi Evans (Executive Producer, Judas and the Black Messiah) and SFFILM Executive Director Anne Lai greeted each other with warm admiration. A decade ago, Ryan Coogler received the SFFILM Rainin Grant, which helped the Oakland native complete his acclaimed debut feature, Fruitvale Station (2013). Soon after, Gurira embraced Coogler excitedly before stunning on the carpet with one of the evening’s sharpest looks.

The star-studded arrivals were capped off by Polley, who spent much time discussing the ins-and-outs of her latest film and writing process with journalists, and Babylon co-stars Robbie and Calva. Robbie not only shared insights into her much-lauded performance in Babylon, but also paused for photos with Maria Manetti Shrem — a philanthropist and patron of the arts as well as the namesake of the acting award she generously supports — and gushed about spending time in San Francisco.

Once the red carpet ended, all of the evening’s stars mingled with guests at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) reception, while other Awards Night attendees enjoyed a cocktail hour and snapped their own photos in front of our step-and-repeat.

Insider Scoop: Acceptance Speeches + Awards

After guests, honorees, and presenters enjoyed dinner service in the YBCA’s Forum, the real show began.

First up, Stephanie Hsu received the George Gund III Award: Breakthrough Performance for her work in the Daniels’ hit Everything Everywhere All at Once. “Stephanie’s performance brought vulnerability, humor, edge, and richness to a story that—at its heart—is about a daughter and mother trying to find connection and trust,” presenter Joan Chen said before handing the mic to Hsu.

“I keep saying that this movie is the most honest handshake I could possibly make with Hollywood, because it encapsulates so much of what I have always dreamed stories can offer,” Hsu said upon accepting her award. “Wildness, subversion, challenge, healing. Mass medicine, mass possibility. Togetherness. A transference of energy that hopefully inspires us to be better for one another. Joy.”

Next, Danai Gurira presented Ryan Coogler with the Irving M. Levin Award for Film Direction. Centering her remarks on Coogler’s uniqueness, as both a filmmaker and a human, Gurira reached out to the director’s mother for input. One anecdote came from a teacher, who compared a young Coogler to a figure from Greek mythology: “He was like Atlas…carrying the entire world on his shoulders, bearing profound concern for others, his family, his classmates, his community,” Gurira relayed. “He needed an outlet to pour all that love and deep care and concern for the world around him [into].” Filmmaking was that outlet.

Gurira applauded the “nice, unassuming” Coogler for holding fast to his vision in such a demanding industry; creating such remarkable, thoughtful worlds on screen; honoring the late Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman; and working with so many women as key collaborators. “Ryan is a man whose pureness of heart is that special ingredient that makes his visionary brand of leadership so empowering,” Gurira said. “This man gives me hope for the world. A world where power is shared.”

After accepting his award for directing, Coogler touched on the surrealness of the moment. “It feels very strange — you get this award [and] look and see Guillermo [Del Toro] and Spike [Lee] holding this thing,” Coogler said. “I feel like I’m just getting started. But it has been 10 years since I’ve been [a] professional filmmaker — a decade as they say, for gravitas.”

The director went on to compare breaking into the film industry like standing outside and watching airplanes fly overhead; for Coogler, those seemingly untouchable planes were filmmakers, flying high. “You know when you sit down on an airplane and you go from, like, just sitting still to, you know, [feeling] tight — and it’s pretty, pretty, pretty fast, and all of a sudden it lifts off and then you know you can relax? That was the moment that, you know, [SFFILM] got me to,” Coogler said, referencing the SFFILM Rainin Grant he received a decade ago, which went toward the making of Fruitvale Station (2013). “Without that, I don’t know where I would be [today].”

Later, Hollywood newcomer Diego Calva presented Margot Robbie with the newly named Maria Manetti Shrem Award for Acting. “Diego is an undeniable talent. You might not know who he is now, but you will soon,” Robbie said of her Babylon co-star on the SFFILM Awards Night stage. “I really look forward to the moment where I get to return the favor and give you an award. ‘Cause that day will come.”

Robbie then thanked SFFILM for its commitment to preserving cinema, reiterating that she wasn’t just thanking the organization for her award, but for SFFILM’s screenings, community outreach, and the San Francisco International Film Festival. “[You do] so much,” Robbie said. “It’s so important to foster new voices, and that means a lot to me, too.”

As for her performance — which fellow awardee Sarah Polley later called something that’s “not to be believed, it’s Olympic acting. I don’t even understand what you did” — the Maria Manetti Shrem Award-winner expressed one connection she shares with her Babylon character, Nelly. “She dreams of being a part of something bigger than her. Something that means something — something that’s gonna last. And I feel that way too,” Robbie continued. “And I think cinema at its best can do that.”

San Francisco’s very own Mariecar Mendoza, senior arts and entertainment editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, had the pleasure of introducing the evening’s final awardee, director and writer Sarah Polley, who received the SFFILM Award for Storytelling. “[It’s clear that] not only [does] she have a genuine knack for storytelling, but also for listening and absorbing the expertise of those around her,” Mendoza said of Polley.

After calling the evening “such an education,” Polley paid homage to a filmmaker who wasn’t in the room: Audrey Wells, notably the screenwriter behind films like Guinevere (1999) and The Hate U Give (2018). “I’m in the hometown of my mentor and role model, the late great Audrey Wells, who loved this city so much,” Polley said. “She made it her mission to make me see myself as a storyteller… This would’ve been Audrey’s moment. So I, in part, accept this on her behalf.”

The Women Talking writer and director went on to give her thoughts on the nature of storytelling, explaining that since making her documentary, Stories We Tell (2013), she’s interested in stories “told by a chorus of voices.” For Polley, “[Our narratives] are moving, fluid, elastic things… but we hold onto them with white knuckles as though they’re solid structures, hoping they’ll be our life raft on the white waters we’re tossed on,” underscoring the importance of not just storytelling, but film as a whole.

Reel Talk: Remarks from Anne Lai + Our Fundraising Successes

“In addition to honoring our awardees, you are also helping to raise critical funds to support SFFILM’s year-round work in showing films, in educating youth about and through film, and helping independent filmmakers get their work made,” Executive Director Anne Lai said in her remarks. This year, the sold-out event garnered generous support from our dedicated, passionate community, allowing us to hit our fundraising goals to Fund the Future of Film.

“It’s as transformative and as present today as it was at its birth over a century ago,” Lai said, referencing the power of films. “The allure of being in the cinema together remains one of the brightest and most potent, the most influential and inspiring, and the most democratic and accessible way in which we can seek entertainment, knowledge, escape, and human connection.”

While Coogler, Hsu, Robbie, and Polley’s collective body of work has already made an unequivocal impact on film, art, and, in many cases, our very lives, SFFILM hopes to empower more artists and filmmakers to change the world through their remarkable talents and singular perspectives. And, thanks to our many supporters, patrons, and members, 2023 is already shaping up to be another landmark year of championing films and filmmakers.

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