By Yiming Fu, Report for America corps member
My Partner, a coming-of-age romance set in rural West Maui debuted on streaming platforms Tuesday. It features two high school seniors, Hawaiian jock Pili and Filipino introvert Edmar, who are caught in rival friend groups at Lahainaluna high school. But a mandatory group project at school pulls them together.
As the two boys work together, attending luaus and cooking cultural dishes, their feelings for each other grow.
My Partner was created by locals and focused on accurately representing and uplifting Hawaiian communities. Native Hawaiian visual storyteller Keli’l Grace directed the film and Maui-born Filipino American attorney Lance Collins wrote the script.
Alongside an adorable slow-burn love story, the movie delves into social, and political issues including the redirection of streams to native taro plants and the ways tourists disrupt locals. The conflict between the friend groups peaks when Peli’s group catches Edmar’s group overfishing a native species in a restored fresh-water stream.
The film was the last to film in Lahaina before the August 2023 wildfires and paints a portrait of rural West Maui life, showing beaches, mountains and now-burned down mom and pop stores.
My Partner has won awards at the 2023 L.A. Asian Pacific Film Festival, the 2023 LGBTQ+ Unbordered International Film Festival and the 2023 Honolulu Rainbow International Film Festival. It was also shown at festivals around the world including Hong Kong, Mexico, Barcelona, Beijing, Mumbai and South Africa. It is available to watch in English, Tagalog and Hawaiian with subtitles.
(Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story confused one of the plot points. We apologize for the error.)
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