Penélope Cruz to Receive Montecito Award at 2022 Santa Barbara Film Festival

Penélope Cruz will be honored at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival with the 2022 Montecito Award, which recognizes an actor’s career achievements and is named for one of the beautiful and stylish areas in Santa Barbara.

Cruz was recently nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Supporting Actress category for her work in Pedro Almodovar’s “Parallel Mothers.”

“In the most complex role written by the master Almodovar, Penelope Cruz delivers the best performance of her career and a master class in calibration and detailed acting,” SBIFF’s executive director Roger Durling said in a statement. “In my book, she’s one of the great performers of our time.”

In “Parallel Mothers,” two women, Janis (Cruz) and Ana (Milena Smit), meet in a hospital room where they are going to give birth. Both are single and got pregnant by accident. Janis, middle-aged, doesn’t regret it and she is exultant. The other, Ana, an adolescent, is scared, repentant and traumatized. Janis tries to encourage her while they move like sleepwalkers along the hospital corridors. The few words they exchange in these hours will create a very close link between the two, which chance will undertake to develop and complicate in such a decisive way that it will change the lives of both.

Other Past recipients include Amanda Seyfried, Lupita Nyong’o, Melissa McCarthy, Saoirse Ronan, Isabelle Huppert, Sylvester Stallone, Jennifer Aniston, Oprah Winfrey, Daniel Day-Lewis, Geoffrey Rush, Julianne Moore, Kate Winslet, Naomi Watts and Javier Bardem.

Cruz will be honored as part of the 37th annual Santa Barbara Film Festival on March 8. The festival runs March 2 through March 12.