Jordan Manley

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   The Navigator
   Treeline
    Out On A Limb
   A Skier’s Journey

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   Environs
   Folks
   Salmonid
    White Planet

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The Navigator
Feature length documentary (2020-2026)

In 1980, Nainoa Thompson became the first Native Hawaiian in six centuries to navigate a voyaging canoe from Hawai’i to Tahiti without a compass or modern instruments. Nearly 50 years later, he embarks on the demanding open-ocean crossing one final time. He and a small crew of student navigators rely solely on the stars, nature’s clues and lessons from the late master navigator Mau Piailug to guide them. As they sail 2,400 miles along the same sea road as their ancestors, they bear the responsibility of keeping this ancient knowledge alive. Naina sails not only to find an island but to search for something unseen. The Navigator reveals what is possible when we closely observe and deeply connect with the natural world.






Director’s statement

For hundreds of years, Westerners cast doubt on how the Polynesians had discovered and settled thousands of islands across the Pacific, the largest ocean on earth. People spun theories that hapless drifters had arrived by accident and lacked the navigational skill and the vessels to reach remote islands.

We now know conclusively that the Polynesians deliberately sailed to reach some of the most remote places on the planet, such as Hawai’i, and they achieved this by combining the power of the mind with clues that nature offered all around them. They were the greatest navigators the world had ever known.

I am a lifelong sailor. My earliest memory is of sailing. When I first learned that Pacific navigators could navigate vast distances without compass or maps, I was deeply humbled, in awe, and perplexed. How could a navigator decipher 8 different wave patterns from a tangle of infinite waves in order to tell direction? How is it possible to stay awake for nearly 30 days without sleep, memorizing a path across the globe, beneath the rotating heavens, and arrive at the intended island with pinpoint accuracy? And how, beyond all odds, did this knowledge still exist?

Over the past 6 years, I have been incredibly honoured and grateful to be welcomed by the Hawaiian voyaging community to witness the magic that they still possess. I joined voyages aboard Hōkūle’a between Hawai’i and Tahiti and beyond, and spent years observing the endless dedication, care, and spirit of revival in the people I got to know. And I came to see a deep burden and ‘kuleana’ that rests upon the shoulders of Nainoa Thompson, who has spent the last 50 years of his life fulfilling a promise made to his teacher, Micronesian master navigator Mau Piailug, to prevent navigation from going extinct.

Above all, I was witness to a way forward for our species and the planet: when we commit to deeply observing and respecting the natural world around us, when we “become the wave”, magic becomes real, and impossible things become possible.


Patagonia Films
Director / Jordan Manley
Producers / Kathy Thompson & Laura Yale
Featuring Mau Pialug & Nainoa Thompson
Co-Producer / Will Cohen
Executive Producers / Yvon Choinard, Harrison Ford, Laurene Powell Jobs, Bremen Schmeltz, Alex Lowther, Alex Simon, Michael Anders
Co Executive Producer / Monika McClure
Editors / Jordan Manley & Jay Macmillan
Additional Editors / Mark Harrison, Ben Gold, Joshua Altman
Music / Matthew Robert Cooper
Original cello performance / Yo-Yo Ma
Poster / Chris Miyashiro & Claire Miyamoto


The Navigator on Letterboxd