On February 17, 2023 the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) honored Todd Field and Martin McDonagh, awarding them with the Outstanding Director of the Year Award. According to SBIFF, this award is presented to a director who is “not afraid to push the envelope in the cinematic world and had the eye for the picture they want to present and then does so, with an expertise that is both gracious and bold.” Field received this award for his recent film Tar, a psychological drama. McDonagh received his award for his newest film The Banshees of Inisherin, atragi-comedy.Both directors walked the red carpet answering a few questions about the level of success they’ve found with these films, their creative process, and many more interesting questions. Inside the Arlington theater, host Scott Feinberg sits down and talks more in depth about their experience after showing clips of their movies. Starting with Field who talked about what life was like during his 16 year old break from filmmaking in which he focused on his family and worked in marketing. Field mentions his children and wife as well as he talked about what spiked his love for film since he initially wanted to pursue music in school but stumbled upon a girl who he followed into theater, then fell in love with it. Field opened up about the importance of the conductor in his film being played by a woman who in this case was played by the great Cate Blanchett after mentioning how rare female conductors are. Feinberg then brought out McDonagh after showing a clip from his film. McDonagh talked about how, although he was born in England, his parents were from Ireland and often went back and forth from both places which is why he leans into Irish culture in films so much. He talks about how the film takes place during the civil war (“it’s like a civil war within a civil war”) since the movie is about two life-long friends fighting while the Civil War is going on. Mcdonagh shared how important rehearsals before filming are to him and touched on meeting the stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, and why he brought them together as well as potentially working with both of them again in the future. The night ended with both directors coming together talking briefly about meeting each other, questions they had for each other. They finally were honored with their award by Roger Durling who praised both directors who he said are two of his “idols”.