A retiring professor. A rebellious former student. A dinner conversation that forces both to confront their place in Hawaiʻi.
That is the setting for Profs, a new short film written and co-directed by former University of Hawaiʻi at 惭ā苍辞补 professor Nancie Caraway. It will premiere at the Hawaiʻi International Film Festival, running October 21–November 5.
The story follows a professor wrestling with his ego and career as he engages with Coco, his former student and soon-to-be successor. Both are non-Hawaiians on a campus that labels them “colonial settlers.” Over dinner, they struggle to understand their kuleana, or responsibility.
The project began with a phone call in summer 2025. Filmmaker Jess Cole reached out to Caraway, who had a stack of scripts waiting to be produced. The longtime friends teamed up to direct Profs.
The intergenerational pair balance opposite talents and styles.
“Cool-headed Cole brings on-set experience in every call-sheet category and is ‘grace under pressure’ with a ‘less is more’ approach,” Caraway said. “While I lean into art-house cinema audacity, and a ‘more is more’ drama queen vibe.”
Caraway is a feminist scholar and activist who served as human rights director at 糖心视频 惭ā苍辞补’s Globalization Research Center. Her book, Segregated Sisterhood: Racism and the Politics of American Feminism, won an international award for the best book on women and politics.
“This film was a personal one to make—a story built around my lifelong friend Nancie, a self-professed ‘recovering professor’ with a dream to make films someday,” Cole said.
Profs is inspired by or TRHT, an inclusive initiative of the university to explore and encourage kuleana to each other, the Indigenous people of Hawaiʻi and ʻāina (lands).
Caraway and Cole honor those values and hope audiences will share them as a path forward. The filmmakers describe Profs as “a love letter to their island home and the University of Hawaiʻi.”
The film screens in the Made in Hawaiʻi Shorts 2 program at Consolidated Theatres Kahala on October 30 at 5:45 p.m. and November 1 at 10:30 a.m., and at Consolidated Theatres Kapolei on November 5 at 7 p.m.