A Tongan short film, ‘Lea Tupu’anga Mother Tongue’ was featured at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, USA.

Luciane Buchanan - a New Zealand actress who is half Tongan and Scottish – wrote and starred in the film. Vea Mafile’o, a Tongan director from New Zealand teamed up with Luciane to create the short film.

The two told Park City that they never imagined that the Sundance Film Festival would select their short film out of 17,000 other applicants from around the world.

The festival lasted 10 days from 18-28 January.

Tongan language

“The short film is about a speech therapist who feels disconnected from her Tongan culture because she doesn’t speak the language.”

The film focused on the Tongan language and cultural identity.

Luciane said that the film was inspired by a study she conducted while being a psychology student.

She said that the study was about a Samoan woman who was bilingual and had a stroke and could only retain her Samoan language.

“Even my grandma who passed two years ago, she acquired dementia and her language skills just got smaller and smaller –and we had this kind of ‘Tonglish’ that we had with each other,” she said.