The Hawaiian island of Kaua’i is seen as a paradise of leisure and pristine natural beauty, but these escapist fantasies obscure the colonial displacement, hyper-exploitation of workers and destructive environmental extraction that have actually shaped life on the island for the last 250 years. Cane Fire critically examines the island’s history — and the various strategies by which Hollywood has represented it—through four generations of director Anthony Banua-Simon’s family, who first immigrated to Kaua’i from the Philippines to work on the sugar plantations. Assembled from a diverse array of sources—from Banua-Simon’s observational footage, to amateur YouTube travelogues, to epic Hollywood dance sequences — Cane Fire offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of the economic and cultural forces that have cast Indigenous and working-class residents as “extras” in their own story.

Xavier Giannoli’s headlong adaptation of a Balzac novel paints a timely picture of literary ambition and media corruption in 19th-century France, a ravishing vision of the birth of modern media. In some ways it is a very old-fashioned, supremely French movie, full of costumes and quill pens, sex and speechifying, and stylish acting even in the smallest roles. However, “Giannoli illuminates the dank frenzy of the 19th-century attention economy with an eye on our own post-truth era. If there’s any justice this movie will become a touchstone among the grasping, scheming denizens of the current media jungle.” ~ A. O. Scott, The New York Times.