Santa Barbara — On Valentine’s Day, the Santa Barbara International film festival staged a writers’ panel that felt less like a masterclass and more like a series of intimate confessions. Several of this year’s Oscar-nominated screenwriters took the stage to talk shop: how they translate text into motion, how they work with collaborators, and why certain creative sacrifices are necessary.
Adaptation, predictably, dominated the conversation. Writers unpacked the ethical and aesthetic tightrope of reworking beloved books and films — the balance between honoring an original and making a movie that actually lives. A recurring refrain was that fidelity is not devotion to every detail but fidelity to tone and emotional logic. Maintain the pulse of the source, they said, and you’ll earn the right to alter its limbs.
Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar, who adapted Denis Johnson’s novella into Train Dreams, illustrated that approach. Rather than pumping up drama, they leaned into restraint. Their screenplay traces a life from 1917 Idaho to 1968 Washington; it’s built as much of omission as of addition. Joel Edgerton’s muted, expressive performance gave them room to keep things spare — letting silence suggest interior life instead of filling it with melodrama. For Bentley and Kwedar, the trick was to let stillness act as voice, not vacuum.
Guillermo del Toro spoke about a different kind of devotion: a decades-long relationship with Mary Shelley’s work. His take merges horror, opera and epistolary storytelling into a project that only found scale with Netflix’s backing. Del Toro emphasized giving the creature moral complexity — a gradual movement from revulsion to empathy — underscoring that adaptation can be an act of reinvention as much as reverence.
Will Tracy offered a sharp example of adaptation across cultures. Bugonia reimagines the cult Korean film Save the Green Planet! for an American setting, with gender swaps and tonal recalibration. Tracy said he avoided flattening the antagonist into an internet caricature; instead he tried to preserve plausible grievances so the character’s monstrous actions remain readable. Yorgos Lanthimos, who contributed the final title, nudged the project toward his own uncanny register, showing how a director’s sensibility can reshape a writer’s blueprint.
Original-screenplay writers brought a different set of concerns: collaboration, iteration and empathy. Ronald Bronstein, who co-wrote Marty supreme with Josh Safdie, described a combative but fertile process — a relentless interrogation of ideas that allows messy, abrasive protagonists to become human once their histories are revealed. Empathy, he argued, is what makes difficult characters intelligible.
By contrast, Eskil Vogt — who works with Joachim Trier on Sentimental Value — described a methodical, map-first approach. They storyboard concepts, then write in a continuous flow, treating the screenplay like a long musical phrase. Their film, spanning generations and perspectives, uses a family home as a structural anchor to examine reconciliation and the compressed arcs of ordinary lives.
The panel also turned to artists making films under threat. Jafar Panahi’s presence carried a weightier air: he discussed It Was Just an Accident, a film shot clandestinely in Iran that draws on personal and observed episodes of interrogation and repression. With a formal ban on filmmaking in his past, Panahi spoke about working in secrecy and the ways sound can stand in for danger. He has used audio detail to suggest an unseen tormentor, a strategy that keeps the narrative sharp while avoiding direct depiction that could invite censorship. Panahi also reminded the audience that these choices are not aesthetic only — they are necessary for survival. He said he hopes to return to Iran and direct a long‑gestating script as soon as conditions allow.
Across the evening, a through-line emerged: political and practical constraints don’t stifle invention; they change its grammar. Filmmakers under censorship adopt obliqueness, sensory tactics and secretive workflows to preserve truth without endangering collaborators. On the festival circuit, those choices invite a certain urgency and clarity that can sharpen a film’s formal identity.
Looking ahead, several writers previewed next moves. Kwedar is directing Saturn Returns for Netflix. Del Toro mentioned a stop‑motion take on Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant and a gothic-Western spin on The Count of Monte Cristo. Panahi has a script he’s been refining for five years and hopes to shoot when circumstances permit. The room buzzed with the tangible momentum festivals can generate: ideas find allies, financing conversations begin, and narratives gain traction toward awards season.
Adaptation, predictably, dominated the conversation. Writers unpacked the ethical and aesthetic tightrope of reworking beloved books and films — the balance between honoring an original and making a movie that actually lives. A recurring refrain was that fidelity is not devotion to every detail but fidelity to tone and emotional logic. Maintain the pulse of the source, they said, and you’ll earn the right to alter its limbs.0