“The more we use [mother tongues], the more we empower people to be able to communicate properly and effectively […] if we don’t encourage the use of our mother tongues in communication, the issue of the right to communicate and participate in society will seriously be limited.”
—Professor Kwame Karikari, Wisconsin International University College, Ghana

In February 2026, the Mother Tongue Film Festival will return to Washington, D.C., for its eleventh year. As we prepare, we have been reflecting on past programs and the stories that showcase the importance of language revitalization and communication.

Mother Tongue’s central mission is to highlight the crucial role languages play in our individual and collective experiences, and to share how language is central to our way of living. As such, linguistic control is a fundamental method of colonial alienation and cultural domination. Serafín Coronel-Molina, professor of literacy, culture, and language education at Indiana University, writes that the pressures working against language retention today are as strong as ever.

The following films from previous Mother Tongue programs explore themes of verbal and non-verbal interaction. Since 2016, the festival has presented many works that exemplify the political and personal significance of spoken word and gesture in an Indigenous context. These narratives highlight how communities and directors assert linguistic agency through the celebration of Indigenous communication, affirming it as a vital expression of cultural identity and self-determination.

We want to reflect on what it means to be understood and to understand in turn. Language is a crucial aspect of rootedness and a person’s connection to their ancestral heritage. Many Mother Tongue stories also emphasize interconnectedness through a person’s linguistic ability. It is crucial to have one’s eyes and ears open to the stories and experiences of those different from us, as well as those who we already love and are close to.

Burros

Directed by Jefferson Stein | 2021

When Elsa and Ena meet at the Tohono O’odham Nation on the Mexico-U.S. border, they become friends even though they don’t speak the same language. Elsa speaks O’odham and English, while Ena—who lost her family after crossing the border—speaks Spanish. The film shows the innocence of childhood alongside the difficult realities faced by undocumented immigrants and Indigenous peoples living in the borderlands. In striving to support each other, they find a source of connection but also relate in their helplessness.

Director Jefferson Stein uses long, quiet shots of Arizona’s desert in this short film. At one point, the two girls stand just a few feet away from a group of migrants held by armed guards, but they don’t see them. In Burros, what happens off-screen and what goes unsaid matters just as much as what we see and hear. Stein shows how speaking the same language can both keep someone safe and put them in danger.

Inspired by growing up in Texas near Indigenous lands in New Mexico, Stein wrote this story after seeing how militarized the border had become. He emphasises how language works both ways: it brings people together with compassion, but it’s also used by the government as a method of control.

La Espera (The Wait)

Directed by Celina Yunuen Manuel | 2016

Set in a Purépecha community in Mexico, La Espera follows the romantic relationship between Yazmín and Zenaida, her mother-in-law. Their story unfolds while their husbands are away working in the United States. The film looks at migration from the point of view of the people who stay behind, people whose daily lives continue and change while their family members are gone.

The film shows quiet, everyday moments between the two women as they grow closer. Director Celina Yunuen Manuel focuses on small gestures and acts of care, bringing us into their private world. The camera takes time to show both the women’s connection and beautiful details of their surroundings, like wind moving through tree branches and the soft folds of their bedsheets.

In one important scene, Yazmín tells Zenaida, in Spanish, that she loves her. Zenaida asks her to say it again “in our words,” in Purépecha—a request that reveals how their Native tongue holds depths of meaning and intimacy that Spanish cannot reach. We see a deeply personal way of showing love that’s specific to their culture.

Jáaji Approx.

Directed by Sky Hopinka | 2015

In this film, Ho-Chunk/Pechanga director Sky Hopinka explores his cultural roots by creating a portrait of his father, Mike (jáaji means father in the Hočak language). The film uses old audio recordings of Mike singing in Hočak and sharing memories of powwows, while Hopinka’s voice can be heard organizing the audio files. Hopinka lovingly adds his own voice alongside his father’s, creating a connection between them that goes beyond distance and time through their shared language and the places they both know.

The images show landscapes both men have traveled through separately: rainy skies on the Oregon Coast where Hopinka grew up, thick green forests. Hopinka uses a technique called rotoscoping to make the landscapes appear flipped and right-side-up at the same time, becoming more abstract and washed out with light. This visual style shows how their father-son relationship is built on shared language, places they’ve both been, and their emotional connection.

Hopinka also plays with the subtitles in interesting ways, switching between languages in the text shown at the center of the screen. Words are not secondary to image, rather they complete it. They are not simply offering a secondary translation but interacting with the narrative itself. Through these layers of family memories and experiences, the relationship between father and son emerges.

Kuuntele (Listen)

Directed by Hamy Ramezan and Rungano Nyoni | 2014

Set in Denmark, this short drama by Hamy Ramezan and Rungano Nyoni explores miscommunication between Danish and Arabic speakers. In the film, a woman and her son arrive at a police station to report domestic abuse. Through a translator, she explains that she fears for her life, but the translator misrepresents her words. The woman faces danger from the translator, a member of her own community, and patronizing officers who blame her for miscommunications. One officer makes an ignorant comment about her burqa which, combined with harsh lighting and stark setting, positions her as a suspect rather than a victim.

Subtitles are also used unconventionally in an early scene: an exchange is shown twice, once with translation and once without. We see the police officers reacting to the woman’s words, but we share their ignorance. Without the text, and unless you speak Arabic, we cannot understand what she says. The son speaks both languages but knows nothing of the abuse or his mother’s desire to escape. Language becomes a barrier to freedom. This generational linguistic divide reveals how immigrant parents and their bilingual children experience the world differently.

Soeur Oyo / Sister Oyo

Directed by Monique Mbeka Phoba | 2013

Set in 1950s Belgian Congo, this film follows Godelive, a young girl, as she is sent to the first Catholic French boarding school and forced to give up the traditional customs and language she learned from her grandmother, Mama Koko. The film uses three languages—Kikongo, Lingala, and French—to show how taking away someone’s language is a way colonizers control people.

Godelive’s father says he doesn’t want his daughter to be “a village girl,” showing how many people were taught that European ways were better than their own cultures. This happened in mission schools like Mbanza-Mboma. The story centers on hidden ways of breaking the rules. Even Sister Astrid, a Dutch nun, breaks the rules by having a relationship with the gardener. The school becomes a place caught between two worlds, Africa and Europe, where Christianity and the Bakongo religion clash. The children turn the snake from the Bible’s Genesis story into their own scary monster who comes after them if they can’t speak French.

Throughout the film, Godelive has dreamlike scenes in the forest with her grandmother, Sister Astrid, and the gardener. Director Monique Mbeka Phoba shows how colonial rule affected these young girls’ minds and how they used their imaginations to cope.

To Wake Up the Nakota Language

Directed by Louise BigEagle | 2017

As the last fluent speaker of the Nakota language on the Pheasant Rump First Nation in Saskatchewan, Armand McArthur works as a language instructor, both in his community and at First Nations University of Canada. In the film, he reflects on the sacred nature of his culture and the significance of communicating in one’s mother tongue.

This National Film Board of Canada documentary, directed by McArthur’s niece, Louise BigEagle, presents him as both a community resource and a man grieving the loss of his community and their shared mother tongue. McArthur speaks of the critically endangered language as a tool for communication with the creator, noting that its vitality is dwindling alongside the land given by the creator. By nurturing the language, one nurtures the Nakota tradition in its entirety and preserves the Nakota identity.

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These films show communication in three important ways: as an act of resistance, as a form of art, and as part of ordinary life. Communication can be a tool for standing up against oppression, a creative expression of identity and culture, and simply a natural part of how people connect with each other every day.

The 2026 Mother Tongue Film Festival will take place from February 19–22 in Washington, D.C.

Eve Reid is an intern for the Mother Tongue Film Festival. She received a BA in history of art at the Courtauld Institute of Art and an MSc in film curation at the University of Glasgow.