Browse films

Last Hawaiian Sugar

Déjà Cresencia Bernhardt
United States, 2022, 22 min.

In English/Hawaiian/Samoan with English subtitles.
Includes adult language.

Twelve-year-old Nua makes peace with the mixed emotions she has about the land she lives on when she learns the sugar plantation she calls home will be closed forever.

Director's Statement

Set on the last remaining sugarcane plantation farm on Maui, Last Hawaiian Sugar is a rare look into the final days of commercial sugar production, what’s happened to the land due to industrialized farming, and the complicated relationship the islands have with it. NUA, twelve years-old, Samoan, identifies with the world through her intensely spiritual connection she has with the land. She is the product of this immigrant camp that ‘Big Sugar’ brought here to work these fields. On the very day Nua learns the mill is closing she struggles to tell her mother about the abuse she suffers.

Category: Drama.

More in Drama

  • Way Back Home

    Way Back Home

    Jun hyung Cho
    South Korea, 2025, 18 min.

    Awakening in an unfamiliar space, Suna meets and converses with a man about the place they
    are in, her desire to go home and the world at large... more ›

  • Village Keeper

    Village Keeper

    Karen Chapman
    Canada, 2024, 83 min.

    Village Keeper is about a family grappling with secrets upholding domestic abuse and unanswered rage that quietly spans generations. Following a... more ›

  • Lollie

    Lollie

    Agnès Shinozaki
    Brazil, 2025, 17.54 min.

    After the closure of the hospital she worked at, Gabi, a young low-income lunch lady, fights to protect her friend Lola, a 71-year-old woman with disabilities... more ›