An award-winning documentary by Cece King ’23 reframes climate resilience through the lived experience of a remote Chilean island community.
Si La Isla Quiere (Island Willing), her 30-minute debut film, screens this month at DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary festival, which runs Nov. 12–20 in New York City, with online streaming through Nov. 30. The film won the Audience Award at the Hamptons International Film Festival this fall.
Set on Robinson Crusoe Island, off the coast of Chile, Si La Isla Quiere follows a family as new conservation policies threaten their way of life and they work to protect a culture of environmental stewardship that has shaped the island for generations.
“My film pushes back against familiar doomsday climate narratives,” King says. “Instead, it’s an intimate portrait of what it means to live with nature. Traditional Western models of conservation that separate people from nature often carry histories of displacement and create a legacy of distance that ultimately destabilizes ecosystems and communities. The film demonstrates how climate resilience doesn’t come from controlling a landscape, but from a deeply rooted sense of place.”
King’s journey to the island began unexpectedly in 2023, when her original plan to document conservation efforts in the Galápagos fell through amid an intensifying El Niño. Soon after, she received an invitation to Robinson Crusoe Island—a place she had never heard of.
What she found was a community whose bond with their extraordinarily biodiverse environment runs so deep that the saying “God willing” becomes “Island willing”—as if the island itself were a living presence.
From Hanover to DOC NYC
King traces her filmmaking approach, in part, to professor Iyabo Kwayana’s Basic Elements of Film course during her sophomore summer—her first term back in the classroom after the pandemic.
“Professor Kwayana’s course made me realize how much I’d been missing creative engagement,” she says. “It was the first time I felt empowered to fully run with my creativity and invite others into the process. That spirit carried into my film: I lived alongside my participants, and nearly everyone on screen also worked behind the camera to get the film made.”
King received multiple streams of Dartmouth support while developing the project. She filmed during a gap year with backing from the Hopkins Center for the Arts and the Dickey Center for International Understanding, and relied on equipment from Dartmouth Libraries’ Jones Media Center.
Two Dartmouth alumni championed the project early on: executive producers Anne-Marie Weldon Keane ’88 and Amie Rappoport McKenna ’94, whom King met while working on an archival project about the history of women at Dartmouth during her first year.
“They were the first to champion the project and guide it into its next phase,” King says. The producing team later expanded to include Oscar-nominated and Sundance-winning producers Tom Yellin, Regina Scully, and Debi Wisch.
“From my executive producers and Dartmouth alumna Amie and Anne-Marie, I learned firsthand how intentional leadership can create a genuine sense of community,” King says. “Their collaboration and mentorship showed me a model of female support that’s grounding and expansive.”
A New York City native, King graduated summa cum laude, majoring in geography with a minor in Arabic/Middle Eastern studies, and was named a John Robert Lewis Scholar and member of Phi Beta Kappa.
In addition to her debut documentary, King served as archival coordinator on director Gurinder Chadha’s upcoming film Christmas Karma. She recently completed a 2025 documentary residency through the Woodstock Film Festival Filmmaker Incubator, where she began developing her first feature.