The Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture welcomed honorees Kristen Stewart, Benicio Del Toro, Wunmi Mosaku and Scott Cooper to the 2025 SFFILM Awards Night Dec. 8.
Hundreds of industry professionals, sponsors and supporters of SFFILM’s mission joined co-chairs Alexandra Wells and Leslie Olrich in honoring the awardees and celebrating this year’s extraordinary achievements in film. From major motion pictures to intimate 16mm movies, the 2025 lineup spanned the spectrum of cinematic ability.
Stars like Richard Gere, Boots Riley and Odessa Young, along with fashion designer Zac Posen joined the honorees on the red carpet. Imogen Poots, Delroy Lindo and Regina Hall presented their co-stars with awards later in the night.
Artists and industry figure-heads unified around a central idea: cinema tells stories, stories are the life of communities, and communities keep people alive.
“There are still so many storytellers, globally, that are making films, and that are doing them in new and exciting and unexpected ways,” said Jessie Fairbanks, SFFILM’s Director of Programming. “You need to show up. You need to be in community and come to theaters.”
Fairbanks emphasized the role moviegoers play in keeping not just the film industry, but the stories it tells, alive. “Watching a film with other people is not the same thing as watching it on your couch,” she said. “I laugh more when I’m around other people. I cry harder when I’m around other people.”
The red carpet came to life as storytellers presented their creations, highlighting Fairbanks’ point that films “need audiences to survive.”
Stewart illuminated the importance and intimacy of sharing stories in her directorial debut, “The Chronology of Water.” The film, based on the 2011 memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch, invites the audience into the pool with the lifelong swimmer, viewing her story of trauma, abuse and grief through the unpredictable lens of water.
From funding to filming, the movie took more than eight years to produce — an act of dedication and care that was rewarded with SFFILM’s Nion McEvoy & Leslie Berriman Award for Storytelling.
Del Toro was honored with the Maria Manetti Shrem Award for Acting for his broad body of work that “exemplifies brilliance, independence, and integrity,” according to SF MOVIE. The prolific actor most recently starred in “One Battle After Another,” a revolutionary movie that exemplifies the vitality of community in enacting material change.
Cooper’s films are known for their unabashed embrace of the mundanity of grief and depression. The director exemplified those values in “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” earning him the Irving M. Levin Award for Film Direction.
“There are factors in the United States government that don’t think there is an issue with the economy, or that there’s an issue with tariffs or lack of work,” he said. “The most important thing, I think, is community.”
He brought cities like Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco into the spotlight, citing the Bay Area as “the epicenter of fighting for community and fighting for justice and what’s right in the world.”
“To be here tonight, to be surrounded by that energy, reminds me that that’s what it takes to get through these incredibly difficult times,” he said.
Mosaku showed the world what fighting for your family while staying true to your values looks like in her role as Annie in the movie “Sinners.” The George Gund III Award for Virtuosity honoree spoke about the differences between herself and her character, and what the two could learn from each other.
“Annie is very much like, everything’s on the table. You know where you stand with her,” she said. “But I can be a bit more diplomatic— a bit more political. But I don’t know if that’s a lesson that she needs to learn.”
The 69th annual SFFILM Festival will return in 2026 for 11 days of “hand-selected films, word class talent, captivating Festival Talks” April 24 through May 4.
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