Congrats Iliana on the honors bestowed upon your film TWIN TONGUES (click for Trailer) – WINNING: Best Feature Documentary at Trenton Film Fest! Best Documentary at Picasso International Film Fest in India ; Best Editing at All that Moves Film Fest in Brazil, and Finalist for Best Documentary at International Black & Diversity Film Festival in Ontario, Canada.
Currently screening at LANAFF film festival (available to watch, see below)
Screening at PHLAFF film festival (Philly) screening – Thursday, June 4, 2026 8:00 PM EDT |Icebox Project Space
Screening at Boricua Film Festival – June 6, 2026 (Rutherford, NJ)
Watch (runtime: 48:23) TWIN TONGUES in its entirety on LANAFF until May 24, 2026
About the Film
In an English-dominant world, can a pair of Latinx twins learn English without losing their Spanish? Twin Tongues/Lenguas gemelas, directed by Iliana Pagán-Teitelbaum, explores the relationship between migration, languages, and power through a Puerto Rican-Peruvian family in Philadelphia. The film explores the causes of language loss in migrant communities. Part 1 “Familia” (Family) introduces a Hispanic family in the diaspora of Philadelphia. Part 2 “Escuela” (School) follows a pair of 7-year-old Spanish-speaking twins into the English-language system of a Philadelphia public school at Penn Alexander School. Part 3 “Raíces” (Roots) travels to post-hurricane Puerto Rico to understand family ties to the island and how Spanish became a language of resistance in the Caribbean island. “Twin Tongues/Lenguas Gemelas” asks: What pressures do immigrant children encounter to assimilate into a dominant language like English? What ethical concerns arise when children are pressed into losing their first language? How does that language loss affect family cohesion and intimacy, parental authority, and the transmission of cultural norms? This film advocates for the right to speak one’s mother tongue and the right to speak non-dominant languages. It celebrates multilingualism as it wrestles with the choices that speakers make in relation to their languages today.
Producers: Iliana Pagán-Teitelbaum and Franklin Guzmán Zamora
We look forward to learning more about your current project – working on video interviews about Latinx migration and languages as a related oral history: MULTILINGUAL MEMORY PROJECT