Until the Sun Sets
2012 · 14m · Hawai'i
Directed by Kenji Doughty
Genres: action, historical, romance
On the eve of the makahiki, two lovers fight to save their Hawaiian village — and each other — from an invading neighbor.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A historical romance-action hybrid about Hawaiian resistance—solid premise, sure, but it plays it fairly straight; I'd need to see if Doughty's subverting the lovers-against-invaders trope or just executing it competently.
14 minutes set against the makahiki festival is a formally intelligent constraint that allows Doughty to situate personal and political stakes within a ritually bounded frame—the kind of period specificity that rewards both research and rigorous editing.
The real question is whether Doughty commits to a single sensory or temporal choice—does he lean into the mythic register with sound design, or does a performance choice between the two lovers become the pivot that makes the whole thing breathe?