Jacob Aija Aini Hawkes Stars in Marshallese-Themed Short “Iakwe: Hello, Goodbye,” Premiering at Bentonville Film Festival

Jacob “Jake” Aija Aini Hawkes stars in the Marshallese-themed short film “Iakwe: Hello, Goodbye,” which received its world premiere at the Bentonville Film Festival, according to Deadline. The film is directed by Nathan Fitch, with producer Lailanie Gadia listed among the cast and crew shown in the report’s accompanying image.

In an interview tied to the premiere, Hawkes said the story draws heavily from his own experience. “I would say like maybe 80 to 90 percent of it is pretty accurate to the real-life story,” Hawkes said, describing the film as largely based on the circumstances that informed his life. The report frames the short as both personal and reflective of lived experience through its Marshallese themes.

Deadline’s coverage centers on the close connection between Hawkes and the material, emphasizing that the on-screen narrative is not simply inspired by an abstract idea, but is presented as a near match to what Hawkes described as his real-life story. The producer and director are credited in the report as central creative partners shaping how that personal account was translated to the screen.

The premiere at Bentonville Film Festival marks the first public showing of the short film in the United States festival setting described in the report. While the Deadline item does not provide additional release dates beyond the festival premiere, it positions the Bentonville debut as the key near-term milestone for the project.

The film’s festival launch also highlights the involvement of a filmmaking team working from Hawkes’s lived perspective, with Fitch directing and Gadia producing. By the time of the premiere, Hawkes’s role as the lead actor is presented as an extension of the personal nature of the story he described.

For audiences and industry attendees at the festival, the project’s stated level of autobiographical accuracy is the central point of interest in Deadline’s reporting. The combination of a culturally specific theme and Hawkes’s account of the story’s realism positions the short as a faithfulness-driven production rather than a looser adaptation.

As the film continues to circulate beyond Bentonville, the next steps would typically include additional festival screenings or a distribution announcement, though Deadline’s report, as provided, does not specify post-premiere plans or timelines beyond the world premiere event.