"Three women from different walks of life – the ancient Chinese goddess Nü Wa (女娲), a Chinese immigrant mother, and her Chinese-Canadian teenaged daughter – grapple with their own definitions of womanhood through the language they share. Mother Tongue is a half animated, half live-action short film that is grounded by the rich linguistic history behind the Chinese Language. The modern Chinese character for “woman,” 女, evolved from an ancient pictograph of a woman kneeling on her knees in submission. 女 (woman) appears in many words in the Chinese language, some of which have nothing to do with women, and in the words that do, 女 is presented in a negative light. This story aims to reclaim the language that mothers and daughters share in their own way. Mother Tongue follows a mother and daughter who struggle to find common ground, hindered by a language barrier, differing values, and conflicting ideas on what it means to be a woman. This isn’t just a story of new beginnings or reluctant ends – this is a story of the in-between, and all the shared tears, dreams, and revelations that make those ends and beginnings possible.
