By John Corrado

The 2024 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 25th to May 5th in Toronto

In Standing Above the Clouds, filmmaker Jalena Keane-Lee introduces us to the group of Indigenous women across generations who are protesting the construction of a thirty meter telescope on Mauna Kea, a sacred mountain in Hawaii. There are already thirteen telescopes on Mauna Kea, and this one will be the biggest of them all.

Leading the fight are Pua Case and her daughters Hawane Rios and Kapulei Flores, as well as Mehana Kihoi and Leina’ala Sleightholm. They were able to collectively stop a ground-breaking ceremony in 2015, spurring them on to grow their movement and begin occupying the land to stop construction vehicles from entering. The bulk of the documentary is made up of on-the-ground footage from their months-long protest, blocking the road up to the mountain.

If Standing Above the Clouds becomes less about the actual legal battle over the telescope, and some details feel left out at 85 minutes, it starts to focus more on the toll that protesting takes on the activists themselves. In more vulnerable moments, the women talk about the mental health impacts of their collective action, including watching their elders get arrested for the cause. We’ve seen a lot of the protest stuff before, so it’s probably most interesting in these moments from a human interest standpoint.

Film Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)

Standing Above the Clouds screens as part of the 2024 Hot Docs Film Festival, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here.