Tonya Mantooth

I don’t think I ever really stopped. Music taught me how to connect with an audience and how powerful lyrics can create an emotional response. Those instincts became incredibly valuable when I moved into producing and, ultimately, into the Festival.

I still play my grand piano. These days, it’s a respite for me—a place I can go whether I’ve had a tough day or even a great day. Music has always been a part of how I process the world, and I think that will always be true.

We inherited a festival with a history and a tremendous amount of potential.

I focused on studio films while also raising the bar for independent cinema and expanding our international footprint by bringing more foreign films into the festival.

The goal was to build a reputation for thoughtful, high-quality programming and create a Festival that filmmakers from around the world would want to be part of.

Baja California gives us something incredibly special: a neighboring culture that is vibrant, creative, and deeply connected to our own region.

We’ve had filmmakers, chefs, and cultural partners from Baja be part of the Festival, and there is so much more potential there. I think the next few years will give us an opportunity to make that border feel much more like a bridge.

The bigger story is festival tourism and the potential economic impact of bringing filmmakers, industry professionals, and audiences from around the world to San Diego.

When people come to the Festival, they have the opportunity to stay in our hotels, dine in our restaurants, visit attractions, extend their trips, and bring family and friends with them. They experience San Diego not just as the location of a film festival, but as a destination.

Twenty-five years in, I believe we are only beginning to realize the full potential of what the Festival could mean for San Diego. The opportunity is there, but it requires greater awareness, investment, and support from city and county governments, as well as our tourism and business communities.

I still think there are people in this city who see the San Diego International Film Festival simply as a series of screenings. They don’t always see the potential economic and tourism ecosystem that can develop around a festival of this scale.
Our goal is to help city and county leaders understand that potential—and to work together to build an event that brings more visitors, more industry, and more economic activity to San Diego.

FOCUS on Impact rests on a neuroscience claim: that film physically changes synaptic pathways. That is a strong assertion for an arts organization to build a curriculum on. What convinced you it was more than a metaphor?

The science is strong, and that is what convinced us that the FOCUS on Impact Film Library could be much more than a metaphor. There is substantial neuroscience research showing that when we become immersed in a story, the brain is not simply watching or listening—it is actively processing the experience across multiple systems.

Attention draws us into the story and helps us stay engaged. The emotional systems of the brain respond to what the characters are experiencing, allowing us to feel fear, joy, sadness, or empathy. The brain’s social-cognition networks help us understand a character’s intentions, motivations, and perspective. And memory systems, including the hippocampus, help us organize and retain what we have experienced.

There is also fascinating research around narrative transportation—that feeling of becoming so immersed in a story that we temporarily enter its world. Brain-imaging studies have found that this immersion is associated with changes in functional connectivity across regions involved in understanding meaning, emotion, attention, and social cognition.

That is the foundation of the FOCUS on Impact Film Library. We wanted to take what we know about the brain and the power of storytelling and create opportunities for films to do more than entertain—to open minds, build empathy, spark conversation, and inspire people to see an issue or another person differently.

That is why we make the films in the library available at no cost to high school and college students. We want to give educators meaningful tools for engaging students around social issues, different perspectives, and the world around them.

The landscape of streaming and theatrical release is constantly evolving. We’ve seen VR, AR, and now AI transform how stories are created, distributed, and experienced. It’s hard to imagine what the next 25 years will bring—but it certainly won’t be boring.

The 25th is an anniversary—a year of honoring our past. But my bet is on what comes next.

We are already more than a once-a-year festival. Throughout the year, we engage filmmakers, educators, students, industry professionals, supporters, and our community through screenings, conversations, educational programs, and special events. I see that becoming even stronger and more intentional.

I also see an opportunity for the Festival to become a stronger partner to the studios and entertainment industry, particularly around premieres, talent engagement, and creating meaningful experiences for audiences. San Diego is an extraordinary market with a sophisticated audience, a strong tourism infrastructure, and a tremendous appetite for entertainment.

In 2021, we screened The Lost Daughter, written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and starring Olivia Colman. The film explored one woman’s complicated relationship with motherhood and the guilt she felt—particularly the uncomfortable question of what happens when you don’t feel like a “natural mother.”

It was a bold, jarring, and incredibly raw film. Our audience that night was about 60% women and 40% men, and I remember wondering how the women would respond to such an honest and vulnerable narrative.

As the audience came out of the theater, women made a beeline for me. Some I knew, many I didn’t. They were saying the same thing in different ways: “This film said things I was too afraid to feel or say.”

As the evening went on, countless men came up to me as well. What they said was equally powerful: “I had no idea my wife was feeling those things.”

That screening stayed with me because it demonstrated the extraordinary power of film. A film can tell a story we may be afraid to tell ourselves. It can give people permission to acknowledge feelings they have never voiced—and, most importantly, it can open a conversation that might never have happened otherwise.