Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, Lauren Luke is a Native Hawaiian, Chinese, and second-generation Filipina filmmaker whose work is deeply shaped by her home and multicultural upbringing. She sees filmmaking as a vessel of preservation—of culture, of place, of feeling—and strives to illuminate the beauty in transience. Her documentary and narrative films have received multiple awards and accolades, including the top prize at NYU’s New Visions, New Voices Festival for Perlita, a tribute to her late Filipina Lola and a tender meditation on grief and remembrance, a theme that continues to anchor her work. Her thesis film, Sons Are Not Earthbound, expands this exploration of loss and love while centering Hawaiʻi itself. Shot on Oʻahu with a fully Native Hawaiian cast and a local crew, the film is crafted as an offering: for, by, and about the people of Hawaiʻi. Both intimate and ambitious, it marks Lauren’s debut Hawaiʻi-based short, carrying forward cultural reverence with the bold spirit of a spunky first contribution to the emerging Kānaka Maoli New Wave. Lauren graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a B.F.A. in Film and Television Production along with minors in Business of Entertainment, Media, and Technology, and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Studies.