A Mexican film about a young linguist seeking to keep a dying language alive won the Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
“Sueño en otro idioma” (I Dream In Another Language), directed by Ernesto Contreras and written by his brother Carlos, focuses on the relationship between two elderly speakers of a dying tongue.
The story revolves around a young university researcher who tracks down the two remaining speakers of an indigenous language in the state of Veracruz. His only problem is that the two haven’t spoken to each other for 50 years, and have no intention of doing so.
Mexican actress Salma Hayek was another celebrity to make an appearance at Sundance, promoting “Beatriz at Dinner,” a satire with Chloë Sevigny and John Lithgow about a holistic medicine practitioner who attends a wealthy client’s dinner party after her car breaks down.
Meanwhile, Sundance honored Esteban Arrangoiz of Mexico City for his short film “The Diver,” an offbeat drama about a diver whose job is to repair pumps and recover waste and junk that finds its way into a city’s sewage system.