A personal family mystery turned into a short film shedding light on Hawaii's dark history of forced isolation on Kalaupapa.

• A woman spent years tracing her great-grandmother, who vanished from family records around 1900, and eventually confirmed she had been sent to the Kalaupapa peninsula after contracting Hansen's disease (leprosy).
• Two longtime local journalists turned that personal discovery into a short film, already screened at a Honolulu film festival with showings sold out.
• The film aims to raise awareness of the Kalaupapa patients' history and support current efforts to build a memorial for the thousands exiled there, as government agencies debate the peninsula's future once the last surviving patients pass away.
• The film is heading to a Big Island screening this weekend and then on to an international film festival circuit, starting in Australia in about two weeks.

Outlook: The filmmakers plan to keep touring festivals and hope to eventually screen the film on Molokai itself, while public discussion continues over a permanent memorial and the peninsula's long-term future.