Standing Above the Clouds (2024) ‘Hot Docs’ Movie Review: Captures the Pathos of Indigenous Fightback with Sincerity

What does it mean to have land so deeply entrenched in your identity, teetering on the brink of loss? What does such a physical space entail, specifically because it is integral to one’s community? It’s not a matter of just losing a geographical definiteness but centrally standing to have crucial determinants of belonging and selfhood brutally ripped away.

Jalena Keane-Lee’s documentary “Standing above the Clouds” follows the mothers and daughters of three native Hawaiian families who are fighting to protect and preserve Mauna Kea, the highest mountain summit in the world from sea level. The natives revere Mauna Kea. With the 2010-passed proposal to construct an 18-story telescope, the world’s largest, the community mobilized in concerted efforts to impede it.

Of course, this is not restricted to a question of Hawaiian native indigenous fightback against land-grabs. The struggle for indigenous communities to assert the right to their land against corporations is universal. It is a heartbreaking tale of outsized greed and devastation, but also a testament to the sheer resistance and determination to save what one holds dear or at least try to in whichever way conceivable. A victory may be far away, but resigning to defeat can simply not be an option worth considering. For the community, the loss of a mountain whose existence is intertwined with that of the community is like an attack on their own body.

The mountain is a sacred place. It holds the same status as that of an ancestor or an elder. The oath to protect it is generationally transmitted. But it is not a formal one. The mountain is embedded in their lives with inseparable attachments. It has stood witness to the community’s past, its watchful presence a source of comfort and affirmation. To take care of it becomes a natural prerogative. To rally for its continued, unsullied existence is essential to retaining one’s dignity and agency. The natives are uncompromising, unwavering, and unhesitant in their demand for justice and the defense of rights. It is not just a decade-long protest movement but has roots in history. Women take center stage in waging the movement.

The film is an expansion and extension of 2020 eponymous short, serving as an impassioned ode to the women of the community. The rhythms of their lives are pivoted around the environment, customs, and rituals that have so long been invested in nurturing, taking on the uglier, imposing demands of reality. The film spans ten years of numerous demonstrations held to stall the construction, as well as court proceedings. Being arrested is a constant imminent possibility, yet they soldier on. What exacerbates the protests is often the cops tasked to remove them from their own community.

However, the families also acknowledge the protests have, in several ways, brought the community together as a whole and awakened their identity. From potential loss, they excavate a depth of mining positive resistance, tapping their innermost reserves of strength and assertion that are perennially threatened by erasure. There’s a weariness that seeps in. The film takes care in admitting moments of crippling vulnerability and emotional fragility. Instability, uncertainty, and the overwhelming situation of elders being arrested remain pervasive.

A nine-month-long camping demonstration near the base of the mountain was halted with the onset of the pandemic in 2020, offering a much-need period of processing all that they have suffered and endured. One of the women mourns how, in the heat of the protests, she never got breathing time to fully register the arrests of the elders. It was so hectic they had to jump ahead to the next agenda. Overall, “Standing above the Clouds” is a thoughtful, deeply felt, and generously attentive peek into the price of development and a resilient pushback.

Standing Above the Clouds premiered at the Hot Docs Film Festival 2024.

Standing Above the Clouds (2024) Movie Link: IMDb