The Santa Barbara International Film Festival Women’s Panel took place at the historic Arlington Theatre on Saturday afternoon.

The session featured Anne Alvergue, director of The Martha Mitchell Effect; Ruth Carter, costume designer on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; Hannah Minghella, producer on The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse; Domee Shi, director of Turning Red; Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, sound editor on Avatar: The Way of Water; and Mary Zophres, costume designer on Babylon.

Claudia Puig, SBIFF program director, served as moderator.

Each of the panelists has been nominated for an Academy Award in their respective categories, and two are former record-breaking Oscar winners.

In 2018, Carter was the first African-American to receive an Oscar for costume design on Black Panther and, in 2019, Shi was the first woman of color to win an Academy Award for her Best Animated Short Film Bao.

The women spoke about the barriers that still exist within their industry, and of the importance of paying it forward and supporting other young women working in filmmaking.

“Change is slow but it’s happening,” said Shi, who was the first woman to single-handedly direct a Pixar film. “But I also feel like it’s on all of us to keep the change coming. I feel responsible now that the door is open to hold it open for the next person to come after me.

“I’m always trying to scope out who can be the next storyteller, and to give that person the same level of trust and support I received.”

Carter said that making way for other women is the “change we want to see.”

“As a costume designer, as an African-American, and as a woman working in the industry, I think many of us were always conscious of being very few, and many of us have felt these chains that limited us in the industry early on,” she said.

“There’s less of them now but I don’t think it’s progressed as rapidly and vigorously as it could.”

The women also spoke about the importance of showing strong female characters on screen.

Alvergue achieved this with her documentary profiling Martha Mitchell, the wife of Attorney General John Mitchell under President Richard Nixon, who was attacked by the administration for speaking out on the Watergate scandal.

“The issue of gaslighting that censured Martha Mitchell for telling the truth is unfortunately one that still exists today,” Alvergue said.

In making Turning Red, Shi said she wanted to create a relatable young female character — someone who her own 13-year-old self was searching for amid a plethora of Disney princesses.

As a middle-schooler, Shi discovered the film Spirited Away, and it had a profound influence on her life.

“It was the first time I had seen a character (Chihiro), with her chubby cheeks and big eyes that looked like me!” she exclaimed.

For Mingella, it’s the stories with purpose and value that inspire her work as a producer, thanks to the influence of her father, the late British film director Anthony Mingella.

She said her father instilled in her a love of storytelling from a young age, and that spawned a career that allows Mingella to help others share their stories with the world.

The animated short film, The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse, adapted from the book of the same name, encourages people to be vulnerable and to feel encouraged in life.

“I hope people see the film and realize they are not alone,” Mingella said. 

As a costume designer, Zophres said the magic of her job takes place in the fitting room, and for her latest film, Babylon, she spent countless hours fitting hundreds of cast members.

“This was the hardest movie I’ve ever done,” she said.

The movies-within-a-movie screenplay required 7,000 costumes that ran the gamut from circus attire to film sets to a recreation of MGM’s Singin’ in the Rain that required Zophres to purchase, paint and reconfigure 250 plastic shower curtains she found at 99 Cents Only stores.

She said she watched the movie in slow motion just so she could see the efforts of her entire team’s work.

Yates Whittle spoke about the importance of collaboration — which also happens to be her favorite part of the job.

“It’s critical that the visuals and sound work together, and when that happens it’s magic to me,” she said. “I’ll do this job as long as I can.”