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The Smithsonian’s Mother Tongue Film Festival celebrates cultural and linguistic diversity by showcasing films and filmmakers from around the world, highlighting the crucial role languages play in our daily lives.

These collected shorts from around the world explore different dimensions of finding sustenance—whether through connecting to place and kin, cooking and eating food, or different forms of artistic expression. Evoking the many dimensions and transformations in these ongoing practices, these films reveal the various ways humans connect to their world. Stay after the films for a Q&A with attending directors.

Registration at the link below is encouraged.
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"Imalirijit" (dirs. Vincent L’Herault, Time Anaviapik Soucie, 2021)
Tim is a young father living in Pond Inlet, Nunavut. As his grandfather did before, he wants to start his own study of water quality to benefit his community. Tim embarks on an inspiring research journey that will lead to empowerment and cultural revitalization. The experience becomes an awakening for Tim and his team, harboring a wind of change and adaptation for this community of the Canadian Arctic.

"Bhaskar Chitrakar: Painting Kalighat Moderns" (dirs. Matthew Raj Webb, Ihaab Syed, Rohan Sengupta, 2024)
This audiovisual portrait of hereditary artist and man of leisure Bhaskar Chitrakar explores his painting style that reimagines a centuries-old, mixed-media tradition of religious idol representation at Kolkata’s Kalighat temple.

"Wa’yûna" (dir. Serena Mosquito, 2023)
Bring your appetite for learning and get ready to blend up some fun! Serena Mosquito whips up a smoothie while speaking in Euchee, a linguistically distinct language spoken in Oklahoma. Equal parts humor and culinary delight, this student film is as charming as it is educational, yielding a heartwarming cultural tribute.

"Ekbeh" (dir. Mariah Hernandez-Fitch, 2023)
While learning to make gumbo from her grandparents, Mariah Fernandez-Fitch draws out their personal stories as a way to honor and preserve their Indigenous history and life.

"Mutsoóngo Malaávu" (dir. Rosa Vieira, 2023)
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, palm wine tapsters play a key role in Yoómbe village life. Palm wine is an alcoholic beverage, drawn from the top of the oil palm, associated with the ancestors. Limber climbers extract this ancient drink to share among family, friends, and guests.

"Burros" (dir. Jefferson Stein, 2021)
Set in southern Arizona, twenty miles from the Mexico border in the Tohono O’odham Nation, a six-year-old Indigenous girl (Amaya Juan) discovers a Hispanic migrant her age who has lost her father while traveling through the tribal lands into the United States.

"Silt" (dir. Emilie Upczak, 2022)
A botanist grieving the death of a beloved aunt travels alone to northern Mexico, where she is nourished by images of the last trip they took together, traversing the Colorado River.

"A Bata do Milho / Corn Beat" (dirs. Eduardo Liron, Renata Mattar, 2023)
In Serra Preta of Bahia, a region of northeast Brazil with a distinctive dialect, the families of rural workers keep the tradition of work songs alive. They cultivate corn in traditional ways and come together in a joint effort throughout all stages of cultivation, including pounding the corn. Each step in the process has songs, rhythms, and festivities that emerge to manage and brighten the work process.

"Nhakpoti / Star Girl" (dirs. Pat-i Kayapó, Paul Chilsen, 2023)
Mêbêngôkre-Kayapó youth and elders reenact the story of how agriculture was brought from the heavens to their community. The Mêbêngôkre-Kayapó people live along the Xingu River in northwest Brazil, amid more than 27 million acres of rainforest. The film is the first narrative video project by the community of A’Ukre, created in collaboration with elders and the Mêbêngôkre filmmaking collective.
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Accessibility at the Mother Tongue Film Festival:
All films are fully open captioned or subtitled in English. American Sign Language interpretation will be provided for Q&As and discussions. All venues are wheelchair accessible.

The Smithsonian’s Mother Tongue Film Festival celebrates cultural and linguistic diversity by showcasing films and filmmakers from around the world, highlighting the crucial role languages play in our daily lives.

Nüshu, a clandestine language created and used solely by Yao women in Hunan Province, offers a unique legacy that unites its practitioners. Delving into the lives of women in modern China bound by the once-secret script, "Hidden Letters" is a poignant exploration of female bonds and the generational echoes of gendered oppression in China. The documentary artfully portrays two women’s journeys as they grapple with the complexities of independence and traditional expectations that both define and confine them. Join us for this inspiring screening followed by a Q&A with director Violet Du Feng, diving deeper into Nüshu’s enduring legacy.

Registration at the link below is encouraged.
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"Hidden Letters" (dirs. Violet Du Feng, Qing Zhao, 2022)
Watch the bonds of sisterhood—and the parallel struggles among generations of women in China—that are drawn together by the once-secret written language of Nüshu, the only script designed and used exclusively by women. Two millennials try to balance their lives as independent women in modern China while confronting the traditional identity that defines but also oppresses them.
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Accessibility at the Mother Tongue Film Festival:
All films are fully open captioned or subtitled in English. American Sign Language interpretation will be provided for Q&As and discussions. All venues are wheelchair accessible.

The Smithsonian’s Mother Tongue Film Festival celebrates cultural and linguistic diversity by showcasing films and filmmakers from around the world, highlighting the crucial role languages play in our daily lives.

What lengths would you go to keep your family together? Inspired by real-life events, "The Wind & the Reckoning" explores Native Hawaiians’ stand against government-mandated exile due to leprosy. This film is a powerful statement about the dynamics of resistance and is a point of reflection on the dislocation caused by disease and settler-colonialism in Hawai‘i. Stay after the film for a discussion with Smithsonian curator Halena Kapuni-Reynolds.

Registration at the link below is encouraged.
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"The Wind & the Reckoning" (dir. David L. Cunningham, 2022)
As an outbreak of leprosy engulfs nineteenth-century colonial Hawai‘i, a small group of infected Native Hawaiians resist government-mandated exile, taking a courageous stand against the provisional government.
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Accessibility at the Mother Tongue Film Festival:
All films are fully open captioned or subtitled in English. American Sign Language interpretation will be provided for Q&As and discussions. All venues are wheelchair accessible.

The Smithsonian’s Mother Tongue Film Festival celebrates cultural and linguistic diversity by showcasing films and filmmakers from around the world, highlighting the crucial role languages play in our daily lives.

Join us for a ceremonial drum blessing closing out our festival, leading into our final film screenings. How does one find balance in the wake of disruptive events? We explore this process through two films that use humor and empathy to make sense of the experience of colonialism and survivance. Each film is a multilayered exploration of the power of telling and retelling stories as a way of finding balance.

Registration at the link below is encouraged.
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"A Bear Named Jesus" (dir. Terril Calder, 2023)
At Aunty Gladys’s funeral, Archer Pechawis heard a tap on the window. It was a bear named Jesus, and Jesus had come for Archer’s mom. Now she’s no longer recognizable—while Jesus hangs out in the shed.

"We Are Still Here" (dirs. Beck Cole, Dena Curtis, Tracey Rigney, Danielle MacLean, Tim Worrall, Renae Maihi, Miki Magasiva, Mario Gaoa, Richard Curtis, Chantelle Burgoyne, 2022)
Ten leading Indigenous filmmakers from Australia, Aotearoa (New Zealand), and the South Pacific craft a compellingly original and insightful anthology film in response to the 250th anniversary of a historically celebrated colonizer’s invasion of their lands.
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Accessibility at the Mother Tongue Film Festival:
All films are fully open captioned or subtitled in English. American Sign Language interpretation will be provided for Q&As and discussions. All venues are wheelchair accessible.