For 25 years, the Maui Film Festival at Wailea was one of the most distinctive events on the Hawaiʻi calendar — a summer-evening film festival with premieres on a giant outdoor screen at Wailea Resort, stars in attendance, and the occasional under-the-stars celebrity tribute. Then, in May 2025, the festival filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and ended its 25-year run. It felt like the end of an era.

Except it wasn’t quite the end. A new festival, with a different focus and a different home, is launching this summer — and if you’re planning a Maui trip for mid-to-late June, it’s worth knowing about.

The inaugural Wailuku Film Festival (WFF) runs June 17–21, 2026 in historic Wailuku, on Maui’s central-valley side — festival week kicks off June 17, with the main public film program running June 18–21. (Sources vary on how the opening day is framed; the official festival site will have the definitive schedule once tickets go on sale May 27.) It replaces the old Wailea-based Maui Film Festival but with a deliberately different angle: instead of Hollywood premieres and red-carpet nights at a luxury resort, WFF is positioned around local filmmaker development and a curated slate of Hawaiʻi, Indigenous, watersports, and student short films. Less champagne, more community. More craft, less spectacle.

The venues tell you the same story. The festival is screening at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center’s (MACC) Castle Theater and the historic ʻĪao Theater in downtown Wailuku, plus a smaller screening space called The Naylor. The ʻĪao Theater is a genuine piece of plantation-era Maui history — it opened on August 22, 1928, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995 after a community-led restoration, and has been operated by Maui OnStage since 1984. One of the most atmospheric small theaters in the state. Seeing a Hawaiʻi-made film in the ʻĪao Theater is a completely different experience than catching a premiere on a tourist lawn in Wailea, and it’s the main reason the festival is worth building a day around.

The festival announced its first 12 titles earlier this month, with more coming before June. A few standouts from the early slate, per the official Maui Now announcement:

“Reel Wāhine of Hawaiʻi: Pākē Salmon” — directed by Vera Zambonelli, a profile of the award-winning Native Hawaiian filmmaker and mentor whose work bridges storytelling and ocean stewardship. Part of the ongoing Reel Wāhine documentary series on women filmmakers in Hawaiʻi.

“MĀHŪ” — Lisette Marie Flanary’s award-winning documentary honoring the theatrical work by Kumu Hula Patrick Makuakāne, reclaiming the respected place of māhū within Hawaiian culture. A major-deal Hawaiʻi film you almost certainly will not see on any mainland streaming service for years.

“All the Things I Leave You” — directed by Jade Castro and produced by Maui’s Lance Collins, a generational family drama set in the Philippines.

“Hui O Waʻa Kaulua” — directed by Molokaʻi filmmaker Matt Yamashita, covering a vital chapter of Hawaiʻi’s voyaging-canoe cultural renaissance.

That’s four out of the first twelve. The categories the festival is programming across are Hawaiʻi, Indigenous Voices, Watersports, and Student Shorts, plus a dedicated Fuzz Flix Fringe Fest sidebar. Additional films will be announced between now and the end of May.

Tickets go on sale to the general public on May 27, 2026. The full festival schedule — which will include the film lineup, workshops, panels, parties, and the Fuzz Flix Fringe Fest screenings — is being released the same day. Check wailukufilm.com starting in late May for the official schedule and to buy tickets.

What to plan around:

Where to stay. Wailuku is centrally located on Maui, about 15 minutes from Kahului Airport (OGG) and roughly 25–35 minutes from Kāʻanapali, Kīhei, or Wailea. If you’re making the festival a trip anchor, staying somewhere in the Wailuku/Kahului/Kīhei area keeps you close to the venues. If you’ve already booked a resort on the west or south side, the drive to a 7 p.m. screening is manageable, but double-check return routes after dark — the West Maui section of Honoapiʻilani Highway around Olowalu and Māʻalaea can be slow.

Pair the festival with a real Maui trip. June 17–21 is before the July 4 peak-travel week, so flights and car rentals are typically more affordable than later in the month. A four-night trip structured around two festival evenings and two “normal Maui” days — a Haleakalā sunrise, a Road to Hāna drive, a Molokini snorkel morning — makes the festival a bonus rather than the whole purpose of the trip.

Rent a car. You’ll want one. Kahului-based screenings are not walkable from the resort side of the island, and Maui rideshare is reliable in central areas but expensive for cross-island trips after 9 p.m. Discount Hawaii Car Rental has the best rates we’ve seen across all four islands and no cancellation fees, which is useful if your festival-night schedule shifts.

The old Maui Film Festival was built around a series of summer evenings on the Wailea Gold and Emerald Golf Courses — the “Celestial Cinema” under the stars, with features projected on a 100-foot screen that routinely drew crowds of 2,000 — plus celebrity tribute nights at the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea. Over its 25-year run the festival brought in Pierce Brosnan, Colin Farrell, Jessica Chastain, Laura Dern, Bryan Cranston, Viola Davis, and Adam Driver, among many others. It was an industry-meets-resort event with high ticket prices, a Hollywood guest list, and a specifically Wailea atmosphere. When it folded, a genuine piece of Maui’s summer calendar went with it.

The new festival is explicitly not that. It’s in Wailuku — a historic plantation-era town with a real downtown grid, coffee shops, and a theater that predates World War II. It’s focused on the kinds of films that tend to get crowded out of mainstream festival programming: Hawaiʻi stories, Indigenous-directed work, ocean-sports docs, student shorts. The vibe will be more film-geek and less champagne-glass, and that’s probably the right call. A lot of what made Maui Film Festival special in its last years was the Hawaiʻi-made programming buried inside the Hollywood-star glitter. Pulling that out and building a whole festival around it is a smart move.

For travelers, it also means the event is more accessible. Tickets will almost certainly be cheaper than the old celebrity-tribute galas, and the venues — the ʻĪao Theater and MACC Castle Theater — are places you’d want to visit anyway as part of a real Maui cultural itinerary. If you’re already curious about Hawaiian films and Pacific Islander storytelling, this is a genuinely better festival for that.

A few practical notes for anyone considering building a mid-June Maui trip around the festival:

Book flights and hotels now. Mid-June is still the tail end of summer school break’s early-bird travel window — fares and rates are typically lower than they’ll be in July, but inventory gets tight four to six weeks out.

Watch for the ticket drop. May 27. Popular screenings at a small festival like this will sell out fast, especially anything with “Hawaiʻi” or “Indigenous Voices” in the program category. Setting a calendar reminder is not a bad idea.

Check the weather and surf window. Mid-June is also the beginning of south-shore summer surf season on Maui, which means Kīhei and Mākena beaches are at their best and Wailea snorkel conditions are typically calm. Pair a festival evening with a morning at Mākena State Park (Big Beach) or Molokini and you’ve got a full day.

Skip renting a car and you’ll regret it. Again — see above. You need one.

We’ll post an update as the full festival schedule and ticket prices drop. In the meantime, bookmark the official Wailuku Film Festival site for programming updates, and keep an eye on the Maui Now events feed for additional film announcements between now and June.