World Premiere Hawaiʻi International Film Festival October 2026
Three generations, one mango tree, and the week the city said it had to come down.
World Premiere Hawaiʻi International Film Festival October 2026
Three generations, one mango tree, and the week the city said it had to come down.
The Film
The mango tree in Milton “Papa” Kāne's backyard has been rooted to his family since the day he was born, his piko planted beneath it.
Now facing a terminal illness, and city enforcement demanding the tree's removal — more costs his family can't carry — Papa takes matters into his own hands. Before anyone else can decide the tree's fate, he gives it, and himself, a send-off no one saw coming.
Refusing to surrender either the tree or his own ending, he quietly sets something in motion — drawing his daughter Noel and his grandchildren into a task whose purpose he keeps to himself, allowing them all to remember the power of ritual, identity, and connection to land in the process. Together they transfigure grief into ceremony, discovering that legacy lives not in what we keep, but in what we carry forward.
The Man & The Tree is a meditative portrait of one family's journey to carry ancestral knowledge forward in a rapidly shifting world.
Screenings
Dates are added here as they're confirmed. @manandtreefilm is the fastest way to hear about a new one.
World Premiere
Showtime and tickets are announced with HIFF's full lineup. The film was named in the festival's First Wave announcement.
The Filmmaker
THE MAN AND THE TREE is a love letter to ʻohana, ʻāina, and the unseen threads that bind generations. As a Native Hawaiian filmmaker, my work is deeply rooted in honoring the stories of our people, our land, and our ways of remembering.
This film is inspired by the quiet strength of my kūpuna and the way we commemorate things as sacred. I hoped to explore the intersection of grief, legacy, and ritual — not through spectacle, but through the intimate rhythms of family.
This film reflects my belief that storytelling is ceremony. By centering Hawaiian language, cultural practices, and intergenerational connection, I hope to preserve and celebrate a worldview where land is family, and letting go is an act of deep aloha.
— Justyn Ah Chong, Writer & Director
Justyn Ah Chong (Kānaka Maoli) is a Hawaiʻi-based filmmaker and father of two, whose work explores the ties between land, lineage, and identity. From the layered poetry of Down on the Sidewalk in Waikīkī to the ancestral activism of the Emmy award-winning Pili Ka Moʻo, his films seek to honor what endures and reimagine how Native stories are carried forward. He runs Olonā Media and is Media Manager at the Polynesian Voyaging Society.
Stills
Scroll →
Photography by Abraham Williams. Courtesy of Olonā Media.
Credits
Pacific Islanders in Communications & Nichols Family Film Fund present
A co-production of Olonā Media, Parklight Productions, and Island Film Group
Starring
Supported by Sundance Institute, Pacific Islanders in Communications, Mana Maoli, and the Nichols Family Film Fund.
Press
High-resolution stills, the poster, title treatments and a screener are available to press and programmers on request. Everything comes back the same day.
Request the press kitContact
Justyn Ah Chong
Olonā Media, LLC
Honolulu, Hawaiʻi