Jojo lives a quiet life in an idyllic volcanic town on the Big Island, until the tourists next door disrupt the peace with their bizarre behavior.
We meet our protagonist Jojo, 30s, as she struggles to clean up the mess her deceased father Marcus has left her: overdue bills, an unkempt office, and his VHS archive. A devout and self-proclaimed “volconographer”, Marcus amassed decades of footage of Kilauea volcano and developed his own theories about the eruptions, much of which was dismissed by the local community and military presence. Ernie, Marcus’ buddy who owns the local video shop, urges Jojo to digitize her dad’s tapes and she spends her evenings reviewing them, searching for some hint of wisdom amidst the madness.
When Aiden and Rose, a couple of 30-something tourists, arrive at the fancy estate next door and play obnoxiously loud music all night, Jojo’s attention quickly turns to their antics. Furthermore, when the tourists start to show signs of strange forgetfulness, Jojo’s curiosity spins into an obsession. As Jojo starts to surveil Aiden and Rose, a deeper puzzle is revealed, and she begins to draw threads between her father’s madness and the tourists’ bizarre behavior. After a confrontation with Aiden culminates in calling the cops, it seems as if the dust has settled–but Jojo isn’t quite satisfied. She decides to take the reins and find out what the tourists next door are really up to.
Kat Mills Martin is an award-winning film director and writer from Hawai’i. In 2023, she was selected to be a Directing Fellow by Women in Film. Kat’s work has screened at Raindance Film Festival, Inside Out Toronto, Cinequest, Austin Film Festival, Heartland Film Festival, LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, and Hawai’i International Film Festival, among others. Her short film CELESTE IN SPRING premiered on the British Independent Film Awards qualifying film platform Directors Notes and is a Vimeo Staff Pick. Kat is currently co-writing the feature script LITERALLY DYING with Nora Logan. Kat’s debut feature WAKE UP, LEONARD, a self-help comedy, screened at more than 20 film festivals worldwide and is now streaming on Amazon Prime, AppleTV+ and more. The film won Best Feature Film at the Best of NFMLA Awards, the Humor & Humanity Award at Heartland Film Festival, and was nominated for the Comedy Vanguard Award at Austin Film Festival and Best Performance at Raindance. Kat graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied experimental theater, movement, and cinema. Traversing the mundane to the transcendent, her work deconstructs elements of our human condition with compassion, reverence, and humor. She is the founder of Studio Norté, a creative studio based in Los Angeles and Ojai, California.
Producer - Julia Schmidt
Producer - Bobbie Lucas
