Four Academy Award-nominated directors — Ryan Coogler (“Sinners”), Josh Safdie (“Marty Supreme”), Joachim Trier (“Sentimental Value”), and Chloé Zhao (“Hamnet”) — gathered at the Arlington Theatre Tuesday night to receive the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Outstanding Directors of the Year Award.

The honor recognizes filmmakers whose singular vision has defined this year’s cinematic conversation, all of whom are nominated for Best Director at the upcoming Academy Awards, alongside Paul Thomas Anderson.

The Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg moderated conversations with each honoree before acclaimed painter and filmmaker Julian Schnabel presented the awards.

Ranging in age from 39 to 51, these directors represent not just the best of this year’s cinema, but the promise of great films to come.

Chloé Zhao 

“Hamnet” marked a return to filmmaking for Zhao, who took a four-year hiatus which she described as her “winter” season.

“I learned very humbly that there are four seasons to a person’s life, to a day, to a creative cycle, and I didn’t understand the importance of winter,” Zhao told the Arlington audience.

“I think we don’t like winter in modern society because it’s not as protective as summer. I was in my 30s and had made four films — I did not have any time to winter, to let things die, to decompose and truly remake the soil. I definitely crashed, because if you don’t winter, nature forces you to.”

Zhao said she spent those years letting “things actually die” and sitting with “the compost” of the process, so that when Steven Spielberg brought “Hamnet” to her attention, she felt more ready to accept the work.

She also spoke about the intensity of acting, and credited the local audience with likely being able to understand her description of performers as “modern day shamans” who put themselves through profound emotional and physical experiences to channel a new character into their consciousness.

That work is sacred and she honors it on set in unconventional ways, including guided meditations and ceremonial practices that help actors separate themselves from their characters.

“There is a proper opening and closing to that ceremony,” she explained, emphasizing that everyone working on a performance enters and exits it together, allowing actors to leave their characters on set rather than carry them home.

Joachim Trier 

Born in Denmark, Trier grew up surrounded by storytellers — a grandfather who fought in World War II and later made a film premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, a father who worked as a sound designer, and a mother who made documentaries.

“I wasn’t great at school,” Trier admitted, “and I am grateful that I’m able to do this work. I grew up with the admiration and dream of world cinema.”

Many of his films are set in Oslo, Trier said, in part because he lives there, but also for creative reasons. A city, he said, is “material,” shaped by seasonal light and specific streets and interiors that become images as you write. “I want to show you something that I’ve seen,” Trier said. “I believe that we all have some particular angle of the world.”

In “Sentimental Value,” Trier said he was interested in how unspoken postwar trauma can echo through families, and in artists who can express complicated feelings in their work but struggle in close relationships.

He also noted the milestone for actor Stellan Skarsgård, who has appeared in 152 films, yet never received an Academy Award (he is nominated for Best Supporting Actor in “Sentimental Value”).

“I’m very, very happy” about Skarsgård’s first Oscar nomination, Trier said, and added that the part was written for him even though Trier had not met him previously. 

Trier also discussed his directing style of sitting close to the camera so he can watch what’s happening in real time. “To look at a big face… to have empathy and look at the other,” he said, is one of cinema’s great gifts.

Josh Safdie 

Born and raised in New York, Safdie said the city offers a constant stream of character study. “I walk from my house to my office and I pass probably 300 narratives,” he said, fueling his interest in telling real life stories.

He credits his father with shaping his early interest in film. Safdie said his dad bought a camera when he was young, and regularly filmed he and his brother, fellow director Benny Safdie, often setting them up for odd little scenarios around the house just to capture their reactions.

He taught his sons about life through films, often blurring the lines. That early immersion, combined with the pace of the city and exposure to flawed characters in his personal life, left Safdie “interested in reality,” and in approaching people with empathy.

Safdie recalled first spotting Timothée Chalamet at an industry event and being struck by what he called a kind of restless focus.

“This young man, in the corner of this room… he can’t stand still,” Safdie said. “He’s just got this hungry energy… you could feel other people believed in it. That’s how powerful it was.”

Safdie wrote “Marty Supreme” for Chalamet with the actor helping him develop the film.

Safdie also used discussed his approach to period storytelling, saying he has a “slight allergy to a period film.” His goal for “Marty Supreme,” he said, was to make “a contemporary film shot in 1952.”

That sensibility is what drew him to acclaimed production designer Jack Fisk, who he credits with grounding the world of the film in authenticity and texture.

Safdie described Fisk’s energy with a kind of awe: “Jack is 80 years old, but he’s the youngest person I ever met,” he said, adding that “passion keeps you young… taking your passion seriously and being foolishly serious and seriously foolish keeps you young.”

Ryan Coogler 

Ryan Coogler traced his filmmaking roots back to Oakland and the moviegoing ritual that shaped him, singling out the Grand Lake Theater as a place where cinema felt both larger-than-life and deeply local.

He remembered the marquee, the crowds, and seeing films there as a kid with his dad — experiences that showed him, early on, how movies could land in a room full of people. “I had my mind blown in that theater,” he said.

Returning there to screen “Sinners” became, in his words, “the most insane screening experience — you can’t believe what people shout out, it becomes like an interactive experience.”

“Sinners” is also Coogler’s most personal movie to date, reflecting his desire to more openly embrace the kind of films he grew up loving — “genre cinema,” as he put it, was “the love language” of his family.

The film’s atmosphere, period setting, and blues-focused theme were also inspired by his relationship with his late Uncle James.

“That was the real relationship between me and my Uncle James,” Coogler recalled. “I used to visit with him and listen to blues music and watch baseball, and when he passed away I listened to those songs with a new ear. I conjured his presence for this film.”

He also pointed to the stability of long-term creative relationships, crediting his ongoing collaboration with Michael B. Jordan as one built on trust from the beginning. Coogler cast Jordan as the lead in his 2013 film “Fruitvale Station.”

“We took a chance on each other,” Coogler said of that collaboration.

He added that Jordan’s professionalism and “incredible kindness” help create an environment where cast and crew can take risks without feeling exposed.

Coogler is coming off a remarkable year, with “Sinners” earning a record-setting 16 Academy Award nominations — but he said he’s working to keep it all in perspective.

“I try to keep it in perspective as best I can,” he said, sharing an early football memory that still guides him: breaking free on a long run and starting to celebrate before the play was over — a moment of premature victory that “still haunts me.”

It’s a reminder, he said, to “keep your eyes forward, going down the field” and stay focused on what comes next. “I’m not sure what it all means anyway.”