drama | 23rd Filmi: Toronto's South Asian Film Festival Dec 6-7 2025

Synopsis:

After moving out of her family home and being estranged from her mother, Gurleen yearns to reconnect with her Punjabi culture through cooking. But as she attempts to do so, she quickly realizes she’s missing a crucial element, her mother’s touch.

Director Biography – Vanesa Millado

Vanesa is a Toronto-based filmmaker of Chinese and Vietnamese descent, with a BFA in Film Production from York University. Her experience in the industry is in both long and short format, throughout the feature, documentary, television, and commercial worlds. With a cinematography background, Vanesa uses that to her advantage when it comes to storytelling in her direction. As an empath, Vanesa uses her sensitivity as her lens to explore emotion, tone, and rhythm. By creating a genuine and safe environment on set, nuanced beats naturally unravel before her lens. Her intuitive exploration of the medium results in strikingly meaningful visuals that support and enhance the story onwards. Vanesa pushes the boundaries of telling underrepresented stories to extend the power of feeling seen and heard to her community. So they too can gather, empathize, and dream. So they too can be proud to belong.

Director Statement

Miscommunication is a common problem, especially with those we hold most precious in our lives. It often occurs between first-generation immigrants and their Canadian-born children due to a stark difference in mentalities and perspectives. As we try to discover our sense of self through individualism, we often feel stuck between two worlds: modern and progressive views from a younger generation and traditional ones held by our parents. Although breaking free from our parents can be a liberating experience that allows for self-exploration, it can also bring about feelings of loneliness, despair and loss. Directing ‘Mother’s Tongue’ was an opportunity for me to express the nuance and complexity of this experience through a grounded, honest approach.

The audience can see themselves in Gurleen: her innocence and desperate will to realize the societal benchmarks informed by her cultural frame. Though Gurleen’s experience of disconnecting from her culture is because of the pressures to get married — a trauma that many young South Asian Canadian women endure — it was important to me to showcase the humanity of her mother. It is common for us to blame immigrant parents for their rigidity in terms of their cultural norms. However, understanding that each person carries their own baggage of trauma no matter the age, allows us to be more compassionate.

In bringing this script to life, I drew inspiration from two films, ‘The Lunchbox,’ with food as a connecting vessel, and ‘Brick Lane’s’ protagonist feeling imprisoned due to conventions of her culture. With ‘Mother’s Tongue,’ cinematography, rhythm and pacing is reflected with the story telling. I wanted to play with demonstrating the pace of a slow, monotonous life and how mentally challenging each day feels when one struggles with loneliness after disconnecting from their family and culture. The visual style allows for framing the integral themes of the film. The rhythm in the film shifts as a reflection of Gurleen’s journey. The film is inspired by the rhythm and cinematography of ‘The Farewell’ alongside moments of tempo in cooking from ‘Chef.’ Longer takes, where the action moves in and out of frame like we’re frozen in time, further aid the visual storytelling of this film. Moreover, the feeling of being misunderstood really hits home with the use of camera panning, as it drags out moments and adds confusion. We’ve incorporated negative space and the use of a 2.39:1 aspect ratio to really emphasize the feeling of emptiness.

As someone who is not from the South Asian diaspora, I’m beyond proud to be cultivating a film with South Asian Canadian creators to help bring this story to light for the community. However, the writer’s decision to incorporate a Chinese family in the story to offer an alternative narrative is proof that ‘Mother’s Tongue’ is a universal story that will resonate with scores of young women. It is a reminder that we can all learn from each other by sharing our stories, regardless of our backgrounds. I want young women to find their own reasons for cooking dishes from their cultures. More importantly, I want them to know that it is never too late to reconnect with their cultural heritage through food because food is a powerful tool to connect people to their culture. It’s an extension. It brings people together and allows us to understand easily, and open conversations across generations and perspectives.

Tag: drama

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