The 30th anniversary of the Sedona International Film Festival concluded on Saturday, March 2, and among the big award winners of the nearly 150 films shown over the course of the festival’s nine days was “Robert Shields: My Life as a Robot,” which won both Best Documentary and the Marion Herrman Excellence in Filmmaking award.

Director Christian Carion’s film “Driving Madeleine,” about a woman revisiting momentous locations in her life with a taxi driver on the way to her new home on the other side of Paris, won the Best of Fest Narrative Award.

Wendie Malick also received the Outstanding Actress award for “7000 Miles,” Randal Kleiser received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Directing and Gary Mule Deer received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Comedy.

Malick was recognized for the emotional range of her performance in the Amy Glazer-directed film in the role of Meli Standish, a woman with Lewy body dementia who might also be legendary aviator Amelia Earhart.

The distance between Earhart the private individual and Earhart the public figure was part of the reason that Malick took the role.

“I think that’s true of so many people who are public figures, and [Glazer] talks about this in [‘7000 Miles’],” Malick said. “[Earhart’s] husband was a great public relations guy, and they realized that for her to get the money to do what she wanted to do, they had to put her out there as this kind of glamor puss … and seemed effortlessly comfortable on the world stage. When in fact, she wrote a lot of poetry. She, I think, was probably shy and didn’t like the attention. She was driven and focused. But all of that extraneous stuff, I think, was what in our minds, would have forced her to want to withdraw from the world stage because it was just too much.

“In the film, we talked about how you become this creature that belongs to the world and you no longer belong to yourself, you lose your sense of independence and being your own person when you’re thrust on stage, and I understand a bit about that being an actor.”

One of the major narrative threads within “7000 Miles” is setting out to complete unfinished goals. Veteran actor Ray Abruzzo, whose credits include “The Sopranos” and “The Practice,” said he sees growth coming out of the SIFF experience.

“This has been a long [professional] journey for me,” Abruzzo said. “I’ve been on this flight for a long time. So I don’t really know what’s ahead. But I always want to do more theatre. I always like to be more challenged in the theatre, I just finished four months run of a play that was very challenging. But you always want to just expand, do more work and do something new that you haven’t done before [that’s] deeper. Stay challenged.”

Glazer said she intends to continue to challenge herself in her next project, “A Man Walks Into A Hardware Store.”

“It’s about a man who walks into a hardware store to buy smoke detectors, and you don’t know why [but] it turns out that he has this backstory,” Glazer said. “You’re in his head, and in his mind he still thinks his wife and his daughter are alive, and he can protect them … I came across it during the pandemic, when everybody was isolated. It spoke to me and it’s an interesting character study. At the core of any film that I’m interested in doing is character. My brother always reminds me that ‘character is destiny’ … If you understand the character, the plot points kind of unfold.”

Other award winners at SIFF this year included “To Kill a Tiger,” Best Documentary Feature; “Tokyo Cowboy,” Best Narrative Feature — Drama; and “The Price of Truth,” Best International Documentary.

“‘To Kill a Tiger’ is the story of Ranjit, a farmer in rural India who takes on the fight of his life when he demands justice for his 13-year-old daughter, a victim of a terrible village sexual assault,” the SIFF press release stated. “‘Tokyo Cowboy’ follows brash Japanese businessman Hideki, who convinces his Tokyo bosses he can turn a profitless U.S cattle ranch into a premiere-performing asset. ‘The Price of Truth’ is a chilling documentary about Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov, editor of what had been Russia’s last independent newspaper, whose vision was permanently damaged when a masked attacker poured paint laced with acetone over his face. The attack did not stop his commitment to advocating for the importance of free speech.”

One of the most common struggles for independent filmmakers is the anxiety of being in limbo after a movie has been completed but is searching for a distribution deal, which is why events such as SIFF are critical.

“You work so hard on a film, and then it’s done, and it hasn’t yet gotten distribution and you’re just [asking yourself], ‘Did this happen?’” Glazer said. “Then you come to a film festival … that is so filled with welcome and lovers of film and people who are interested and engaged in stories with a leader like SIFF Executive Director Patrick [Schweiss], you go, ‘Oh, okay. Now I know why we did this.’ There are people out there and they will find [your work]. ‘If you build it, they will come.’ [SIFF] is the living proof of that.”