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.

Schedule of Events

February 21, 2024

7–9 pm: Frybread Face And Me at Rasmuson Auditorium, National Museum of the American Indian

Director: Billy Luther (Navajo, Hopi, Laguna Pueblo)

Runtime: 83 min

Content warning: For mature audiences. Contains coarse language.

Two adolescent Navajo cousins from different worlds bond during a summer herding sheep on their grandmother’s ranch in Arizona, learning more about their family’s past and themselves.

Registration is not required. Seating is first-come, first-served.

February 22, 2024

7–9:15 pm - Regeneration at Ring Auditorium, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Stories of loss, revelation, and recovery can lead us on the path to restoring a sense of wholeness. In this program, youth confront generational trauma and seek to break through for a brighter future.

7 pm - Mother’s Tongue

Director: D. Wilmos Paul

Runtime: 16 min.

Junior, an African teenager ashamed of his accent, enrolls in a creative writing club hoping he can make it through the semester without speaking… until he’s faced with his worst fear.

7 pm - Mama Mom

Director: Xun Sero (Maya Tzotzil)

Runtime: 80 min.

Content warning: For mature audiences.

In this deeply moving dialogue between a mother and son, Tzotzil director Xun Sero confronts his past with honesty, understanding, and forgiveness.

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February 23, 2024

12–1:30 pm - Reclaiming Knowledge at Q?rius, National Museum of Natural History

As a result of colonization, much Indigenous knowledge was destroyed or extracted, with many sacred objects finding their way to museums overseas.

12–1:30 pm - Nii Nuu Sacred Skin

Director: Omar Aguilar Sánchez (nuu Savi)

Runtime: 45 min.

The Nii Nu’u, or sacred books, are codices that contain the history and worldview of the Ñuu Savi people (People of the Rain, or Mixtec people). Today, none of the surviving Mixtec codices are in the hands of the community. After 500 years, director and scholar Omar Aguilar Sánchez has interpreted the codices based on the knowledge of his own language and culture, teaching communities how to read the codices, offering workshops, and recreating the pictorial writing to support their identity, with practical implications for the community in the creation of an official logo.

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2–3:45 pm - Redrawing The Lines at Q?rius, National Museum of Natural History

2 pm- I Am Home

Director: Kymon Greyhorse (Diné, Tongan)

Runtime: 3 min.

This poetic memoir is a love letter that speaks of introspection and what it means to rediscover who you are and cherish where you come from.

2 pm - Kunu

Director: Francisco Huichaqueo (Mapuche)

Runtime: 62 min.

Mapuche and Chileans have always been in conflict. So how will they live together? First, by getting to know each other. Once the field is leveled, a conversation can begin. This film presents a crisp portrait of the process behind an architectural structure that aims to start a conversation.

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4–6:15 pm - Memory And Renewal at Friedman Family Auditorium, Planet Word

4 pm - Grape Soda In The Parking Lot

Directors: Megan Kyak-Monteith (Inuk), Taqralik Partridge (Inuk)

Runtime: 8 min.

What if every language that had been lost to English—every word, every syllable—grew up out of the ground in flowers? The Scottish Gaelic of Taqralik Partridge’s grandmother and the Inuktitut of her father unfold in memories of her family, of pain, and of love.

4 pm - We Will Speak

Directors: ????/Schon Duncan (United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee), Michael McDermit

Runtime: 94 min.

The Cherokee language is deeply tied to Cherokee identity, yet generations of assimilation efforts by the U.S. government and anti-Indigenous stigmas have forced the Tri-Council of Cherokee tribes to declare a state of emergency for the language in 2019. While there are 430,000 Cherokee citizens in the three federally recognized tribes, fewer than an estimated 1,500 fluent speakers remain—the majority of whom are elderly. The COVID pandemic has unfortunately hastened the course. Language activists, artists, and youth now lead efforts to use and hear Cherokee again in daily life.

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7–9:15 pm Bridging Worlds at Friedman Family Auditorium, Planet Word

7 pm Aikane

Directors: Daniel Sousa, Dean Hamer, Joe Wilson

Runtime:14 min.

A valiant island warrior, wounded in battle against foreign invaders, falls into a mysterious underwater world. Everything changes when the octopus who rescues him transforms into a handsome young man.

7 pm-Y SWN

Director: Lee Haven Jones

Runtime: 89 min.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher swept to power in 1979 with a manifesto that promised to establish a Welsh-language television channel. Months into her premiership, she reneged on her promise and sparked protests in Wales. Against a backdrop of civil disobedience, the iconic politician Gwynfor Evans vows to starve to death unless the government changes course. In Y S?N, one of the most colorful chapters of modern Welsh history is told in an imaginative and unique style.

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 11 am–1:45 pm - Sustenance at Baird Auditorium, National Museum of Natural History

11 am- Imalirijit

Directors: Vincent L’Herault, Time Anaviapik Soucie (Inuit)

Runtime: 28 min.

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.

11 am - Bhaskar Chitrakar Painting Kalighat Moderns

Directors: Matthew Raj Webb, Ihaab Syed, Rohan Sengupta

Runtime: 11 min.

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.

11 am - Wa’yuna

Director: Serena Mosquito (Euchee)

Runtime: 2 min.

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.

11 am - Ekbeh

Director: Mariah Hernandez-Fitch (Houma)

Runtime: 9 min.

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.

11 am - Mutsoongo Malaavu

Director: Rosa Vieira

Runtime: 19 min.

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.

11 am - Burros

Director: Jefferson Stein

Runtime: 15 min.

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.

11 am - Silt

Director: Emilie Upczak

Runtime: 10 min.

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.

11 am - A Bata Do Milho Corn Beat

Directors: Eduardo Liron, Renata Mattar

Runtime: 16 min.

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.

11 am - Nhakpoti Star Girl

Directors: Pat-i Kayapó (Mêbêngôkre-Kayapó), Paul Chilsen

Runtime: 15 min.

Mebengokre-Kayapo youth and elders reenact the story of how agriculture was brought from the heavens to their community. The Mebengokre-Kayapo 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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1–3 pm - Hidden Letters at Meyer Auditorium, National Museum of Asian Art

Directors: Violet Du Feng, Qing Zhao

Runtime: 89 min.

Nushu, 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 

Hidden Letters: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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3–5:15 pm The Wind and The Reckoning at Baird Auditorium, National Museum of Natural History

Director: David L. Cunningham

Runtime: 94 min.

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.

The Wind & The Reckoning: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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7–9:45 pm- We Are Still Here at Ring Auditorium, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

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.

7 pm- A Bear Named Jesus

Director: Terril Calder (Métis)

Runtime: 6 min.

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.

7 pm - We Are Still Here

Directors: Beck Cole (Luritja), Dena Curtis (Warrumungu/Warlpiri), Tracey Rigney (Wotjobaluk/Ngarrindjeri), Danielle MacLean (Warumungu/Luritja), Tim Worrall (Ngai Tuhoe), Renae Maihi (Ngati Whakaue/Ngapuhi), Miki Magasiva (Samoan), Mario Gaoa (Samoan), Richard Curtis (Ngati Rongomai/Ngati Pikiao), Chantelle Burgoyne (Samoan)

Runtime:  90 min.

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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Date: February 21-24, 2024

Location: Various Venue

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