Christopher Makoto Yogi’s debut feature is a wonderful tribute to a place, pushing against Hollywood’s erasure of Hawaii with affection and contemplation. Starring Alex Zhang Hungtai from the band Dirty Beaches, the film is a musical dream that feels both immensely personal and culturally expansive.

Blurring boundaries between past and present, memory and truth, Christopher Makoto Yogi’s hypnotic film is a life-affirming reckoning with death’s inevitability. Full of luscious images and sounds, moving to the gentle rhythm of a dream, I Was a Simple Man is attuned to the beauty of existence.