Ho'omau
2017 · 22m · Hawai'i
Directed by Kenji Doughty
Genres: action, drama, historical
In ancient Hawai'i, a young woman of mixed ancestry defends all she holds dear when war breaks out between tribes.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's doing the prestige historical drama thing, which usually means restraint and reverence—and yeah, there's real subversion hiding in how it refuses to let the "mixed ancestry" angle become the expected trauma narrative, but the framework itself is pretty conventional.
Doughty understands the weight of mythic form: how to hold tenderness and violence in the same frame without false comfort, and the film's formal control—its restraint in moments that could rupture—places it squarely in a lineage of indigenous cinema that honors both ancestor and viewer.
There's a single choice here that matters: the decision to let silence and landscape carry the emotional labor instead of score, which on a 22-minute runtime with modest means becomes the thing that transforms it from competent to necessary.