STANDING ABOVE THE CLOUDS

Director Jalena Keane-Lee and Producer Amber Espinosa-Jones will be in attendance for the screening + Q&A, moderated by Haʻaheo Auwae-Dekker, Program Manager at Pacific Islanders in Communications.

Standing Above the Clouds is a feature-length documentary that follows three families of Native Hawaiian mother-daughter activists, standing to protect their sacred mountain Mauna Kea from the building of the massive Thirty Meter Telescope. Directed by Jalena Keane-Lee (Tracing History, The Construct: Female Laborers and the Fight for Equality), Standing Above the Clouds was expanded from her 2020 short film of the same name.

The film premiered at Hot Docs 2024 where it won the Bill Nemtin Award for Best Social Impact Documentary. It also won Best Made in Hawaiʻi Feature Documentary at the 2024 Hawaiʻi International Film Festival, Best Feature Documentary at the 2024 San Diego Asian Film Festival, and People’s Choice Award for Best Documentary at 2025 Maoriland Film Festival.

This program is co-presented by Hawai’i Chamber of Commerce of Northern California and the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good at the University of San Francisco.

Plays in

PACIFIC SHOWCASE

In collaboration with our National Multicultural Alliance (NMCA) partner, Pacific Islanders in Communications (PIC), CAAMFest’s Pacific Showcase joins…