One of Yana Alliata’s first jobs in the film industry was working on the crew of director Alexander Payne’s 2011 made-in-Hawaii feature film, “The Descendants.” The experience of working on a film about Hawaii that was being filmed in Hawaii stayed in her mind long after the production wrapped, and when Alliata got the opportunity to write and direct her first full-length feature film, she returned to Hawaii to shoot it.
Her film, “Reeling,” premiered at SXSW (South by Southwest) in March 2025, and screened at the Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF) in October. From there it received a theatrical distribution deal with Future of Film is Female, a nonprofit distribution company supported by Neon Films.
“Reeling” opened a limited-release national theatrical run on Wednesday at the Los Feliz American Cinematheque in Los Angeles. Additional screenings will be April 12 at the Roxy Cinema in New York City; May 12, 16 and 17 at the Nitehawk Cinema-Williamsburg in Brooklyn, N.Y.; May 17 at the River Oaks Theater in Houston; May 28 at the Cleveland Cinematheque in Cleveland; and June 3 at the Tomorrow Theater in Portland, Ore. A screening is planned but the date has not been set for a screening at the Laemmie Glendale Theater in Glendale, Calif.
Alliata, a first-generation Italian-American who grew up in Hawaii, is planning a theatrical screening in Honolulu sometime in July to coincide with the film’s digital release by Tribeca Films. The date and location have not been set but she is looking forward to sharing the film with a hometown audience familiar with local culture and Oahu’s North Shore.
“The location of the story is deeply meaningful to me and holds a lot of memories,” Alliata said. “The story is also deeply meaningful to me. I was at my best friend’s birthday luau that he hosts every single year around the Christmas holidays. A bunch of my family and friends and I were home (in Hawaii), and the events from that day and night inspired the film that would then be shot one year later in that same location.”
“The cast is a mix of nonprofessional and professional actors — there are two professional actors. The nonprofessional actors are all family and friends of mine, so it’s a true film made with ohana that was born and raised on the islands or has been on the islands for generations. With the exception of two of the cast members, everybody’s local.”
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Ryan Wuestewald stars as Ryan Wood, a Hawaii expat who returns home to Oahu for a birthday luau and struggles to fit in with his family and friends. A life-altering accident has destroyed his memories of something that happened years before. As the luau continues, he gradually recalls the event that changed everything for him.
“It was lot of fun shooting, especially with people that I’m so familiar and comfortable with,” Alliata said. Among those people is her brother, Fabrizio Alliata, who plays a character named Fabrizio. “The approach was let the nonprofessional actors play themselves within the fictional story circumstance, and allow them the freedom and the trust that they can just be themselves without having to pretend or force any kind of emotion. And then I let the professional actors, who were blending in very well with the nonprofessional actors, do the heavyweight lifting of actual acting. The result is actually a seamless and very authentic piece of Hawaii, a true film about place and ohana and identity memory and the reconstruction of masculinity, all of these incredible themes within the genre of a psychological family drama.”
She hopes that the recognition “Reeling” is receiving nationally will inspire other islanders to share their stories in film.
“Last year at HIFF, ‘Reeling’ was the only fictional feature film that was shown in the ‘Made in Hawaii’ category. It was in competition with six documentaries,” Alliata said. “Typically there are a couple narrative fiction features (in the category), but mine was the only one last year, and that, to me, is telling us that we need to be telling more local stories. That is the goal and the hope, and so what is exciting about this film is landing (national) distribution and being able to share it with wider audiences. That is a very big plus for filmmakers in Hawaii and local stories as a whole.”
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