EXCLUSIVE: Three icons of cinema — Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro — will receive the Hammond Cinema Vanguard Award together at the 41st Santa Barbara Film Festival next month. Spotlighting their work in this year’s awards favorite One Battle After Another, written, directed and produced by Paul Thomas Anderson, the actors will receive the award, which was recently renamed after longtime friends and collaborators of SBIFF – Deadline’s Pete Hammond and Madelyn Hammond – on Monday, February 9.

Pete Hammond will be moderating the tribute for the award, which recognizes the trio of actors for their contributions to the much-honored film in which they star alongside Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti. Their acclaimed roles as Bob (DiCaprio), Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Penn) and Sensei Sergio St. Carlos (Del Toro) have helped catapult the film to the forefront of the awards conversation this season. One Battle After Another is the most nominated Golden Globes contender with nine, including individual noms for DiCaprio, Penn and Del Toro, and it just won three Critics Choice Awards including Best Picture. It has also been named Best Picture of the Year by the Gotham Awards, The National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics Circle and other groups.

“This is by far the most exciting tribute in SBIFF history,” SBIFF Executive Director Roger Durling said. “These three artists individually have regaled us with exemplary and unforgettable performances, and together, they have made one of the best films, One Battle After Another. Let’s rejoice.”

From Warner Bros. Pictures, One Battle After Another follows Bob (DiCaprio), a washed-up revolutionary who exists in a state of stoned paranoia, surviving off the grid with his spirited, self-reliant daughter, Willa (Infiniti). When his evil nemesis (Penn) resurfaces after 16 years and Willa goes missing, the former radical scrambles to find her as father and daughter battle the consequences of his past.

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DiCaprio is an Oscar-winning actor, producer and activist whose career spans more than three decades. He has received seven Academy Award nominations, six BAFTA nominations, 13 Screen Actors Guild nominations and 15 Golden Globe nominations, winning the Academy Award, Golden Globe, and BAFTA for Best Actor for his performance in Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu’s The Revenant. DiCaprio has earned acclaim for roles in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Wolf of Wall Street, Inception, The Great Gatsby, and Django Unchained, as well as through his long-standing collaboration with director Martin Scorsese on films including The Aviator, The Departed, Gangs of New York, Shutter Island and Killers of the Flower Moon. He began his film career in the early 1990s with standout performances in This Boy’s Life and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, earning his first Academy Award nomination for the latter. In addition to acting, DiCaprio co-founded Appian Way with Jennifer Davisson, producing acclaimed features and impactful documentaries focused on environmental issues, including Path of the Panther, Yanuni and Virunga. In 2021, his foundation unified with Global Wildlife Conservation, combining to launch Re:wild, which works with over 600 partners in more than 80 countries to help protect more than 35,000 species of wildlife and half a billion acres of the wild.

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Penn is a two-time Oscar-winning actor, filmmaker, and author whose career spans more than four decades. As an actor, he has received five Academy Award nominations, winning Best Actor for Mystic River and Milk. Over the course of his career, he has been honored by the Cannes, Berlin and Venice film festivals, as well as the Golden Globes, SAG Awards and major critics’ groups. His extensive filmography includes Dead Man Walking, Sweet and Lowdown, I Am Sam, 21 Grams, The Thin Red Line, The Tree of Life, Carlito’s Way, The Game, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. As a filmmaker, Penn has directed features including Into the Wild, The Indian Runner, The Crossing Guard, The Pledge and Flag Day and co-directed the Emmy-nominated documentary Superpower. Through his company Projected Picture Works, he recently produced September 5, which earned PGA and Golden Globe Best Picture nominations and an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay. A longtime humanitarian and civil rights advocate, Penn founded CORE (Community Organized Relief Effort) in 2010, which continues to provide disaster relief worldwide. He also also received the Modern Master Award at the 2002 SBIFF when he was on the awards circuit with I Am Sam.

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Del Toro is an Oscar-winning actor celebrated for a body of work defined by range, intensity and critical acclaim. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic and received a nomination for Iñárritu’s 21 Grams. His portrayal of Che Guevara in Soderbergh’s Che won him the Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival and Spain’s Goya Award. Del Toro’s extensive filmography includes The Usual Suspects, Basquiat, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Sicario and Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Inherent Vice, Snatch, Sin City, Things We Lost in the Fire and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, as well as television work such as Escape at Dannemora, which earned him an Emmy nomination. Recent projects include Netflix’s Reptile, which he also executive produced, Soderbergh’s No Sudden Move, and Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme.

The Cinema Vanguard Award recognizes actors who have forged their own path, taking artistic risks and making a significant and unique contribution to film. Previous honorees include Adrian Brody & Guy Pearce, Paul Giamatti, Colin Farrell & Brendan Gleeson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Carey Mulligan, Laura Dern, Michael B. Jordan, Willem Dafoe, Casey Affleck & Michelle Williams, Rooney Mara, Eddie Redmayne & Felicity Jones, Martin Scorsese & Leonardo DiCaprio, Amy Adams, Jean Dujardin & Berenice Bejo, Nicole Kidman, Peter Sarsgaard, Christoph Waltz, Vera Farmiga, Kristin Scott Thomas, Stanley Tucci and Ryan Gosling.

The 41st Santa Barbara International Film Festival will take place February 4-14.

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