Japanese director Kadowaki Kōhei’s animated feature “We Are Aliens” has won the Kau Ka Hōkū (Shooting Star) Award at the 46th Hawai’i International Film Festival, which handed out its jury prizes at an awards reception at the Halekulani Hotel in Waikīkī on Nov. 1. Presented by Hawaiian Airlines, the prize is reserved for an international filmmaker’s first or second feature. Festival programmers pick the nominees, fiction and nonfiction alike, and an international jury chooses the winner.
They also handed an honorable mention to “The Seoul Guardians.” Zilla Barbosa’s “Making the Line” was named best Made in Hawai’i feature. It won best Made in Hawai’i short, which puts it in line for Oscar qualification, and also took the Pacific Award’s short film honor, a category added this year for the first time. The Made in Hawai’i jury said the narrative short depicts “the beauty and weight of an entire life cycle and does so while staying true to a Native Hawaiian perspective.” Aukai Lagiri’s “Kukulu” received an honorable mention in the Made in Hawai’i short category, while Ty Sanga’s “Lahaina: Voices of Change” earned honorable mentions from both the Made in Hawai’i and Pacific Award juries.
The Made in Hawai’i jury comprised Michelle Sugihara, executive director and CEO of the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE); Taylour Chang, Bishop Museum’s director of public programs and community engagement; and producer and location manager Kent Matsuoka. Now in its 10th year, the strand is backed by the Nichols Family Fund and the Hawai’i Film Office, and its titles can be programmed on Hawaiian Airlines flights. Jordan Manley’s “The Navigator” won the Pacific Award for best feature, which HIFF presents with Pacific Islanders in Communications.
It is about the magic we seek, but perhaps do not always find,” the jury said. Its members were Samoan-born New Zealand filmmaker Miki Magasiva; Native Hawaiian academic, curator and lawyer Noelle Kahanu; and independent producer Averie Joy Maikalima O Makua Huffine. The HIFF Best Short Film Award, presented by Hawaiian Airlines and Oscar-qualifying for international shorts, went to Fraser Pemberton and William Jaka’s Australian drama-thriller “Faceless.” It centers on a Warlpiri man living three parallel lives along the Birrarung-Ga (Yarra River) in Naarm (Melbourne).
A unanimous wow,” the jury said. Chung; Christine Yi, president of Gold House Studios and general manager of Gold House Labs; and Sarah Fang, manager of the Doris Duke Theatre and programmer at the Honolulu Museum of Art. Zou Jing’s “A Girl Unknown” (China) took the Netpac/USA Award from a field of 12 nominees.
HIFF is the sole U.S. festival permitted to hand out the Network for the Promotion of Asian-Pacific Cinema prize, which is also given at Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Rotterdam and Busan, among others. The jury called the film a “patient and carefully layered human story in which a young woman finds a way to survive oppression and seek her own future.” Its jurors were Duncan Caillard, a Melbourne-based film researcher and critic who lectures in global creative industries at the University of Melbourne; Libby Hakaraia, head of Māoriland Films; and Therese Hayes, a film festival consultant and Netpac USA member. Lee, the festival’s executive director.
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