Roger Durling (Executive director, Santa Barbara International Film Festival) 2014

Reviewed by Pontus Joeheden.

Roger Durling took over Santa Barbara Film Festival 11 years ago after he had attended to the festival for several of years and always ended up disappointed afterwards. Roger got in contact with the people in charge of the festival and offered to take over the festival. He pitched his idea and offered to do it for free the first year and he got the job.

Roger succeeded to build up the festival again and make it into on of the most popular film festivals in the states. Roger had the luck to build a very strong relationship with big sponsors such as UGG Australia (main sponsors of the festival), Moet and many, many more. For the past few years, Santa Barbara film festival have had the honor of have big Hollywood starts to come and here and talk about their work and their career. Santa Barbara Film Festival have had stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Martin Scorsese, David O. Russell and many, many more to come here and talk. I personally had the opportunity to seen David O. Russell talk about his life as an director and his amazing success in his last 3 movies (The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle) who all together have been nominated for 25 Oscars. Thereof 3 wins and most likely there will be more after this years Oscars.

2013 the film festival broke their own record and  17,000 people attended to the film festival. Roger was sure that that record was going to be broken again this year.

The film festival costs over 3,000,000 dollars to arrange and that would never be possible without all the fantastic sponsors and volunteers, Roger said. He is very grateful that he got the opportunity to take over the festival and work with all the people that make this wonderful festival possible.