Lara St. John's Documentary To Premiere February at Santa Barbara Film Festival

January 18, 2026, 2:33 PM · A new documentary film directed by violinist Lara St. John will premiere on February 6 at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Violinist and documentary film director Lara St. John.

The film, called Dear Lara, explores sexual abuse and its repercussions in the classical music world, starting with Lara's personal experience as a 14-year-old student at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

"I never set out to become a filmmaker. I set out to tell the truth," Lara wrote in a statement on the film's website.

"For most of my life, I kept quiet about the sexual assault I endured at the Curtis Institute in 1986," Lara wrote. "When I finally went public decades later, in 2019, I thought I might find closure. Instead, I was flooded with messages from other survivors – students, colleagues, musicians from around the world – all sharing similar stories. The scale of silence and institutional complicity was staggering. I realized I couldn’t walk away from this."

"Dear Lara began as a DIY act of defiance. I picked up a camera and started filming, talking, and listening – not knowing where it would lead," she wrote. "While I’d spent many years working and collaborating as a musician, I had no formal training as a filmmaker. What I did have was a sense of urgency, and the trust of people who had waited far too long to be heard."

Lara worked with experienced and award-winning film professionals to make "Dear Lara," which was produced by Patrick Hamm and edited by Christie Herring.

The film begins with Lara's story being published in The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2019 - and it widens to encompass the stories of multiple victims and institutions across North America and Europe. Here is a description from the film's website:

Dear Lara is a deeply personal documentary that exposes decades of sexual abuse and institutional complicity in the classical music world.....Lara travels across North America and Europe to meet others who, like her, were failed by the very organizations meant to protect them. As these personal accounts accumulate, a pattern emerges of institutions shielding predators at the expense of the vulnerable. Blending unflinching testimony, investigative rigor, and a haunting original score, the film exposes ingrained practices of harm and cover-ups, rooted in power, silence, and the worship of reputation over justice.
Joined by fellow musicians, journalists, students and activists pressing for accountability, Lara’s pursuit to illuminate this insidious pattern in the classical music world serves as both a reckoning from within and a rallying cry for cultural change, created by someone who lived an all-too-common ordeal and refused to look away.

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For more information on "Dear Lara," click here. To purchase tickets for the premiere Santa Barbara International Film Festival, click here.

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Lara St. John's Documentary To Premiere February at Santa Barbara Film Festival

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