Catapulting to the elite rungs of the award season conversation after winning a Gotham Award for Outstanding Lead Performance earlier this week, Colman Domingo will also receive the prestigious Montecito Award at the 40th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Friday, February 14, 2025. The festivities will highlight Domingo’s masterful performance in director Greg Kwedar’s film Sing Sing (see my review here ), a powerful drama based on the real life Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program.
Domingo’s star turn as Divine G brings an incredible mix of vulnerability, charisma, and resilience to the big screen in a film that focuses on a prison drama program and what happens when a somewhat reluctant outsider joins the group, and the men decide to stage an original comedy production.
Recognized as part of last year’s SBIFF Virtuosos Awardees for his affecting performance as Civil Rights leader Bayard Rustin in Netflix and Higher Ground’s film Rustin for which he received an Academy Award Nomination, Golden Globes, BAFTA and SAG nomination, Domingo was not able to attend last year’s ceremony due to a filming conflict. He did, however, attend a recent SBIFF Cinema Society screening of Sing Sing and Executive Director Roger Durling interviewed him after the film, in which Domingo shared that the filmmakers struggled for six or seven years “trying to figure out their way into the script [for Sing Sing].”