Focus on Film: Swimming to the Riv

SBIFF Cinema Society screens a preview of Nyad at the Riviera, the dramatic biopic of famed distance swimmer Diana Nyad who, at the age of 60 and with the help of her best friend and coach, finally achieved her lifelong dream of completing the 110-mile open ocean swim from Cuba to Florida. The film, which stars Annette Bening, Jodie Foster, and Rhys Ifans, will be followed by a Q&A with director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi on October 15, just five days before Nyad opens in theaters and two weeks before it starts streaming on Netflix… CWC Global at UCSB’s Pollock Theater gets local with a screening of Lamya’s Poem, an animated film that shares a timely tale about a 12-year-old Syrian girl who has left her hometown of Aleppo as a refugee during the Syrian civil war, and finds solace in her inner fantasy life in the poetry of Rumi. Producer Sam Kadi, the Santa Barbara-based filmmaker (The Citizen) whose war-zone documentary Little Gandhi was the Syrian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2017, does a Q&A after the October 17 screening, followed by a reception sponsored by the nonprofit ShelterBox USA.