From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment.

I'm Elvis Mitchell. You can also hear this show at KCRW.com.

The Los Angeles Film Festival is about to begin, and its director,

Rebecca Yeldam, and artistic director, David Antenar here. First of all, guys, thanks so much for being here.

Pleasure. Thank you so much, Elvis. Thank you. Pecha, let me start with you and ask you,

this is your second year of the festival. Was there something you thought was the festival needed that

you wanted to bring to it? Well, it sort of feels like my first proper festival. Last year,

I joined, you know, quite, you know, just within a couple of months of the start of the festival.

So it was a very kind of dramatic ramp up. And I got to learn a lot last year from that experience.

And it was funny because many people that I knew in the industry and filmmaker friends

have often made the comment, L.A., you know, where is the great film festival in Los Angeles?

Los Angeles really needs a great, should have a great film festival.

And through the experience of last year,

I felt quite strongly that, in fact, LA had a great film festival. It was perhaps for many,

many, many people yet to be discovered. And I think in the process of the last year and, you know,

in teaming up with David here and making some refinements,

I feel it's all been a process of trying to hone that intent and mission to put on a great

show for our city and draw attention to what is already there.

And so really with everything that we're doing

from the marketing materials through to the content is really sort of having a consistent

through line so that everything we say is connective to what it is that we're presenting.

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