KAMA'ĀINA
Directed by Kimi Howl Lee / 2020 / 17 min
In Hawaiʻian, Kamaʻāina means “Child of the Land” and refers to any resident born on the islands––regardless of their racial background.
A queer sixteen-year-old girl, Mahina, must navigate life on the streets in Oahu, until she eventually finds refuge at the Pu'uhonua o Wai'anae––Hawaii's largest organizes homeless encampment.
“Our intention with Kamaʻāina was to shed light on the staggering homeless crisis that plagues Hawaiʻi’s youth, without fetishizing the hidden poverty in paradise. The cast was comprised of primarily houseless, first-time actors––including our sixteen-year-old lead, Malia Kamalani––whom we met at the local Starbucks.”
Kimi Howl Lee is a multi-racial writer, director and graduate of Stanford University's Film and Media Studies program, who began her career as a Story Editor curating short-form content for Snapchat, Inc., before transitioning full time to screenwriting. Kimi's feature script, MOUTH won the Grand Prize for Best Narrative Screenplay in the 2015 BlueCat Screenwriting Competition, and subsequently landed on the TrackingBoard's 2015 "Hit-List" and the 2020 BreakingThrough the Lens fellowship. Kimi's award winning short films SUGAR and KAMA’ĀINA have travelled the film festival circuit internationally, and have premiered on Nowness and Short of the Week, among others. Kimi was most recently staffed on the Amazon Studios + Blossom Films drama series THE EXPATRIATES, based off the NYTimes best-selling novel and Netflix's LOCKE AND KEY based on the popular graphic novel. She was also a participant in Film Independent’s 2019 Episodic Lab, and landed on the 2019 Young and Hungry list of Hollywood’s top new writers. Kimi is repped by UTA and Kaplan Perrone.