Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — An award winning Tongan short film could possibly be up for an Oscar nomination. 'Lea Tupu'anga/Mother Tongue' premiered last year and has been shown at 20 international film festivals around the world.
Out of 17,000 films submitted to the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in the United States, 'Lea Tupu'anga/Mother Tongue' was selected becoming the first Tongan film to play at the festival.
Speaking to Pacific Waves, the film's director Vea Mafile'o and actress Luciane Buchanan said they have been campaigning for the film to officially qualify for 98th Academy Awards in the Best Live Action Short category.
The film explores language loss through a young woman who struggles to reconnect with her Tongan heritage. Buchanan wrote the film inspired by her relationship with her grandmother.
Having missed last year's submissions for the Oscars accreditation, Buchanan said they had to wait a whole year but explains the process has been complicated. She recalls putting in their submission an hour before the deadline closed.
"They're not like simple applications at all," Buchanan said.
"You've got to upload things and all the materials and then about a month ago, we found out that we got accepted, and then the group chat was going off."
Buchanan who recently starred in the Hawaiian historical drama series 'Chief of War' and Netflix's 'Night Agent' said a lot of time was spent on planning on getting 'Lea Tupu'anga' to more audiences and rallying the community.
Mafile'o who's directing credits include feature-length documentary 'For My Father's Kingdom', said with little funding and star power behind their project, they felt behind.
"How are we going to amplify ourselves so that we get into vision of the right people who are voting? Because it's again, we don't know who the voters are and accessing them is quite complicated but other teams have been able to have like screenings throughout the years.
"So for us, it was like, well okay what's the strategy? What we do have is our people, so we were just like, okay we need to activate the 'Red Wave'".
Announcing the film's Oscar consideration on her Instagram account, Buchanan said the reception has been beautiful and with the backing of their Tongan community, Mafile'o said it feels like they've already won.
"I'm just so happy with the response, it's the village, you know... when you make a film, you don't make it on your own, so it's very intricate and we need everybody."
The final nominations for the Academy Awards will be announed on 22 January 2026.
Mafile'o said it will feel like winning Lotto if their film makes the official nominations list but that they've already accomplished so much.
Both women said they hope to see more Tongan stories on the big screen and are willing to help other aspiring filmmakers.
"We don't want to be the only ones doing this," Buchanan said.
"We want to stand among many... filmmaking is not something in our culture yet, we're so amazing with music and sports and so many other things.
"Film was just kind of like that unknown area and there's a couple of us in different positions but I just know that as we move forward we just want to be able to help do more and tell our stories more."
Section: RegionalTags: Mother Tongue
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