A programme of short films by mixed heritage filmmakers, around the themes of identity and heritage, exploring othering, belonging and the trouble of melting pots.

Whether it’s learning or losing a language, the programme Trippin’ Over My Tongue looks at the barriers raised when the mother tongue isn't as fluent as we want, or the words simply slip away. How do we connect to our culture when a language has been lost, and who do we turn to to serve as translators or teachers?

Part of a series presented by T A P E Collective, of programmes of short films by mixed heritage filmmakers around the themes of identity and heritage, exploring othering, belonging and the trouble of melting pots.

Please note that some of the films contain discussion of generational and ancestral trauma and references to sex, violence, suicide, and racism.
This programme contains flashing lights and may not be suitable for people with certain types of epilepsy.

Without Warning -  UK 2020 Emily Macrander 7 min
Without Warning is about a girl who struggles to understand her heritage and identity as a sperm donor baby that grew up not looking like her parents. In an attempt to get to the bottom of ‘where she’s really from’, Ria approaches her Pakistani sperm donor father and hopes to learn more about her heritage through him.

Taarof: A Verbal Dance -  UK 2018 Dir Alannah Olivia 17 min
A young woman attends the funeral of her estranged father and trips on the customs and traditional ideals of what it is to be an Iranian woman.

On The Threshold Of Liberty -  Finland 1992 Heidi Tikka 12 min
An examination of a breakdown on one’s own language. It is a record of a personal struggle in trying to construct meaning as an outsider in foreign culture.

Mother’s Apricot Compote -  UK 2020 Nia Fekri 23 min
A fragmentary narrative of two women whose lives are distant from each other yet hold traces of one another. This film conjures the ghosts that hover over the day to day lives of these two women; a rumination on the experience of the immigrant.

Sorry, My Somali is not Very Good -  UK 2020 Warda Mohamed 2 min
A young Somali woman has trouble with her mother tongue and gets the encouragement she needs on a phone call with her father.
 

Northern Great Mountain - Stoerre Vaerie -  Sweden, 2015, dir. Amanda Kernell, 15min
Elle, 78 claims that she is completely Swedish and has grown a resentment for Sami people even though she speaks Sami and grew up in the Mountains in Lapland. Under pressure from her son, she reluctantly returns north for her sister's funeral.

I Bit My Tongue -  France 2020 Dir Nina Khada 25 min
Shot in the summer of 2018 and fascinating in terms of its ethnography and cinematography, the filmmaker explores her dual cultural heritage and, in particular, the loss of a tool as underlying as language itself. Growing up in France in the 90s with a father who never spoke to her in Algerian meant the director’s link to her roots was broken, all the more considering language’s fundamental role as a way of bringing people together.

Image description: A woman sits smiling outside on a dark night, behind her is a white car in the distance.