Healing Lahaina: A Documentary Creating Impact On and Off Screen
- Stevie Gray
- Apr 7
- 5 min read
Documentary films are a unique blend of non-fiction storytelling, art, entertainment, and social impact. Making any documentary can be incredibly challenging, and making a good, balanced documentary is even harder.
Unlike a narrative film, where the script is written, then shot, documentarians discover stories as they’re shooting and piece the film together in the edit bay. With numerous hours of interviews, b-roll, and archival footage, it’s especially impressive to piece a comprehensive story into a short documentary.
For all of these reasons and more, Healing Lahaina is a truly special film. Healing Lahaina is a short documentary that covers the aftermath of the devastating August 8, 2023 Lahaina Fire, which tragically took over 100 lives and destroyed 2,200 structures.
The film weaves a number of complex topics into its story: community resilience, climate change, mental health, disaster preparedness, and colonialism.
I had the pleasure of speaking with the Los Angeles-based Healing Lahaina production team, Laurel Tamayo, the Impact Producer and Director, Tehya Jennett, the Producer and Impact Producer, and Maxfield Biggs, the Editor and Post Producer, to learn more about the creation of the film and its ongoing impact campaign.
A Personal Connection
This film is deeply personal to Laurel Tamayo, whose family’s multigenerational home was destroyed due to the fire. While she never envisioned being a director, this was a story she felt called to tell.
Having worked on other projects focused on the intersections of climate storytelling and mental health, the Healing Lahaina team was well equipped to create a film about such a complex set of topics.
The team noted how approaching such a personal project wasn’t an easy feat, but Tamayo’s connection to the community and her unique perspective were vital to telling an authentic story. With the Tamayo story at its center, the film gives its audience a window into the family and their surrounding community.
Although many of the interviewees were family and friends, Tamayo mentioned the difficulties of asking so many of her community members about the worst experience of their lives. While the film addresses tragic and heartbreaking topics, there’s a number of lighthearted moments that highlight the Aloha spirit and love of the Lahaina community.
Creating Impact
Documentaries, especially those focused on disasters, can often be voyeuristic. The team highlighted how important it was for them to set impact goals before going into production, with a focus on community healing and survivor-focused storytelling.
The Healing Lahaina team wanted to do more than just create a film. They created three pillars in order to make a lasting impact.
Support the Lahaina Wildfire Survivors
Tehya Jennett, the film’s Producer, mentioned how often disasters can be forgotten about after they occur, leaving the impacted communities without support as they work to rebuild. For that reason, the team has the goal of raising $10,000 for the survivors of the Lahaina fire. Donations can be made on the Creative Visions website.
Reduce Stigma Around Mental Health & Natural Disasters
The team noted the stigma that’s commonly associated with traumatic experiences. Oftentimes, survivors of these experiences don’t have an outlet to process their feelings with their community, or they feel pressured to keep their feelings to themselves. The goal of the Healing Lahaina team’s ongoing events is to create space to process emotions, build support, and provide mental health resources.
Encourage Global Climate Resilience
With climate disasters as an inevitability, the team mentioned how vital it is to prepare communities for these disasters, raise awareness about their lasting impact, and create climate action.
Measuring Impact
One of the goals of the Healing Lahaina team’s impact campaign is hosting community screenings. They’ve already hosted a few of their own, but their larger goal is to have organizations across the world host screenings. To host a screening in your community, you can fill out their community screening request form.
On top of the mental health resources they provide on their website, the team recently released a Screening & Discussion Guide, which has a number of steps and resources for hosting.
When asked about the impact they’ve measured so far, Tamayo noted the audience post-screening survey results. At one screening, “64% of people said that after watching the film, they were interested in seeking mental health support services,” and at another, “100% said they had learned something new.”
After having a disaster preparedness expert speak at one of their events, Tamayo even mentioned how audience members had packed go bags which they later used during the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires.
Lessons Learned & Looking Forward
Although the team has worked on climate-focused projects before, they mentioned how Healing Lahaina was a new approach to storytelling. Tamayo noted how her previous work had “been all about preventing climate change through climate action,” in contrast, she said “it’s now about preparedness and climate resilience.”
The film’s editor, Maxfield Biggs said “editing a film like this is a difficult process,” having spent months watching through the 9 hours of footage they captured in order to piece the story together. They mentioned how the team met many times, often in nature, to talk about the number of ideas brought up in the interviews and the story arcs they wanted to showcase.
One of the most impressive feats of this film is the pace at which it was created and released. The team worked tirelessly to bring the project to life. Beginning production in March of 2024, the film had its official world premiere at the Hawai’i International Film Festival (HIFF) on October 8, 2024.
From its initial release, the film has continued to screen at a number of festivals, and its next screening is set for May 3rd, 2025 at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Tickets are now available as of April 7th.
Overall, the film is a showcase of the importance of community, and as Tamayo said “how something as simple as knowing your neighbor can make a difference.”
And, after speaking with Tamayo, Jennett, and Biggs, I couldn’t help but think how special it is for a project to both highlight and create a community at the same time.
I hope to see more films like Healing Lahaina in the coming years, ones that authentically tell the stories of local communities and their experiences, ones that create impact both on and off screen. Support the film, host a screening, or explore the discussion guide on their website, www.healinglahainafilm.com.
To learn more about the Healing Lahaina team, check out The Sustainable Act Podcast episodes with Laurel Tamayo and Tehya Jennett!
We’re also thrilled to announce that The Sustainable Act is an official Media Partner for Healing Lahaina!
As part of our mission to amplify storytelling at the intersection of sustainability, community, and justice, this partnership reflects our commitment to centering BIPOC-led narratives and impact-driven film.
About the Author
Stevie Gray
Born and raised in Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, Stevie Gray is a non-fiction storyteller and film production sustainability professional determined to produce solutions-forward work that evokes systemic change. In his travels, Stevie has witnessed the intense effects of our species on Earth's ecosystems, fueling his commitment to share intersectional stories that have local and global impact. Stevie hopes to motivate readers to work towards dismantling the harmful systems that have brought us to this point in our history.
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