The main event has traditionally been held annually in autumn at venues in the Gaslamp Quarter, La Jolla, and Balboa Park.

The festival hosts celebrity awards banquets, panel discussions, retrospectives, parties, premieres, and contemporary independent narrative, documentary and short film screenings.

Special advanced screenings for VIP members[1] and educational programs[2] for San Diego area high schools are held year round in addition to an annual formal "Oscar watch party" in the winter.

[4] In its first decade, films premiering at the festival included Roger Dodger, The Blair Witch Project, Fahrenheit 9/11, An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for Superman, Napoleon Dynamite, Primer, The Machinist, and Born Into Brothels.

[7] According to Strack, they were modeling it after Napa Valley Film Festival, with a "longer term goal" of rivaling Sundance or TriBeCa.

[8] Tribes represented on the AIA board include Sac and Fox, Luiseño, Kumeyaay, Seminole, Lipan/Mescalero Apache, and the Barona Band of Mission Indians.

Notable members of the board include character actor Saginaw Grant (The Lone Ranger, Breaking Bad), Randolph Mantooth (Emergency!, Sons of Anarchy, brother of Tonya Mantooth) and Erica Pinto, the Chairwoman of Jamul Indian Village.

[9] Notable films premiering at the festival during this time include Silver Linings Playbook, 12 Years a Slave, He Named Me Malala, Goosebumps, The Imitation Game, Wild, Lion, Tiger, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Call Me By Your Name, Marshall, The Favourite, Widows, Boy Erased, Jojo Rabbit, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Marriage Story, The Irishman, and Parasite.

[citation needed] In 2013, New York area film critic Jeffrey Lyons was added as festival host and made honorary jury chairman.

[11] In September 2019, the festival began hosting free screenings of popular movies on Mission Beach.

[12] In 2019, the festival expanded to six days and hosted a second opening night film (The Irishman) at the La Jolla Village.

[13][14] Notable films premiering at the festival during this time include Nomadland, The French Dispatch, Spencer, The Power of the Dog, The Lost Daughter, The Banshees of Inisherin, and The Inspection.

In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the festival was reduced to four days and presented 114 films both virtually and on drive-thru screens.

Recipients at the San Diego festival include Andy Garcia,[24] Laurence Fishburne,[25][26] Keith Carradine, Patrick Stewart,[27] Annette Bening,[28] and Alan Arkin.

Previous recipients include Gabriel Byrne, Jim Sheridan, Jean-Jacques Beineix, and Laura Dern.

Since 2014, honored celebrities and winning filmmakers have been presented with a "Golden Eagle" themed statuette, sculpted by Apache artist Ruben Chato.