How the Palm Springs Film Fest Became the Event That Oscar Contenders Cut Short Their Holiday Break to Attend

The Palm Springs International Film Festival, which kicks off Friday and runs through Jan. 12, has become an increasingly important stop on the film awards season circuit —to the point that much of the industry now cuts short its holiday break in order to rush to the Coachella Valley right after New Year’s Day.

Palm Springs, which is about a three-hour drive east of L.A., is believed to be home — or second home —to hundreds of members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (The Academy does not share exact statistics.) But the number of Oscar voters in town explodes each year once the fest kicks off, as hordes ofactors, directors, writers, songwriters, executives, publicists and others descend on the city, which normally has a population of less than 45,000.

A centerpiece of the fest is its awards gala, a black-tie dinner ceremony at which a dozen honors are bestowed upon high-profile Oscar contenders (often by other high-profile Oscar contenders on behalf of the fest), who tend to accept with scripted stump speeches featuring talking points aimed at the many Academy members spread among the locals at the 212 tables seating 2,400 guests in the cavernous Palm Springs Convention Center.

This year’s roster of honorees includes A-listers like Timothée Chalamet, Miley Cyrus, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Hudson, Adam Sandler, Rose Byrne, Michael B. Jordan, Amanda Seyfried and Ethan Hawke, as well as the filmmakers and casts of Frankenstein, Hamnet and Sentimental Value.

For some — like Hawke, the star of a lower-profile indie gem called Blue Moon, in which he plays the late composer Lorenz Hart —the reason for showing up is surely to try to convince Academy members to prioritize watching their film before Oscar nomination voting (Jan. 12-16); after all, voters presumably won’t vote for something they haven’t seen. For others, it’s largely about optics;when some voters see someone like, say, Sandler accepting an award, it becomes easier to imagine that person as being worthy of their own vote.

For similar reasons, many of the talent in town for the awards gala also arrive a day early or stay a day late in order to participate in post-screening Q&As —for instance, on Saturday, I will moderate a convo after a showing of One Battle After Another with the film’s trio of principal actresses, Chase Infiniti, Teyana Taylor and Regina Hall.

Interestingly, the fest’s impact may be felt most of all in an area that includes precious few household names: the best international feature Oscar race. Because the fest takes place in early January, shortly after the announcement of that category’s Oscar shortlist of 15 titles (that came on Dec. 16), but shortly before Academy members whittle down that list to five nominees, it is a crucially important time for those films — and their filmmakers — to be visible to voters.

The fest’s screening lineup is locked in place before the shortlist announcement, but its programmers make a point of securing dozens of top non-English-language titles in their lineup. As a result, all 15 of this year’s shortlisted films were already set to screen at the fest before the shortlist was announced.

A related highlight of the fest each year, which also reaches voters both in-person and via recording, is the THR-moderated Best International Feature Film Panel, which this year will take place on Jan. 7. THR’s Kevin Cassidy and Mia Galuppo will interview the directors of 13 of the 15 shortlisted titles: All That’s Left of You, Belén, Homebound, It Was Just an Accident, Kokuho, Late Shift, Left-Handed Girl, Palestine 36, The President’s Cake, Sentimental Value, Sirat, Sound of Falling and The Voice of Hind Rajab. (The director of another, No Other Choice’s Park Chan-Wook, cannot make it on the 7th, but is at the fest today.)

One sad note about this year’s edition of the fest: It will be the first since the death last September of Harold Matzner, the gregarious businessman and philanthropist who helped to put the fest on the map. PSIFF was launched in 1990, but struggled during its first decade. In 2000, Matzner, a larger-than-life local known as “Mr. Palm Springs,” became the chair of the fest’s board, a capacity in which he served until 2023. Through his generosity (he personally donated $12 million to the fest) and showmanship (among other things, he lured top talent and also recruited Mary Hart to emcee the awards gala), he turned it into a world-class event.

The fest is now capably overseen by Nachhattar Singh Chandi, another successful businessman and longtime local who had served on the fest’s board under Matzner, with pivotal assistance from the fest’s longtime publicist and tireless champion Steven Wilson of Scenario PR.