Twin Tongues
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.
Director: Iliana Pagán-Teitelbaum
Producers: Iliana Pagán-Teitelbaum and Franklin Guzmán Zamora
United States, Puerto Rico // 2026 // Documentary, Suitable for All Ages // Los Features
93 minutes
About the Filmmaker
Iliana Pagán-Teitelbaum (she/ella) is a Puerto Rican filmmaker, writer, and educator. She received a Los Fellows PHLAFF Film Residency and a Leeway Foundation Art and Change grant for her film Twin Tongues/Lenguas gemelas about multilingualism in the Latinx diaspora. She also directed the disability justice short films Mulberry Tree and My Crip Kin. Iliana grew up in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. She has a BA from the University of Puerto Rico; MA and PhD degrees from Harvard University; and teaches Latin American film and global cultural studies at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Her book Violencia invisible: Narrativas de la exclusión en América Latina (Invisible Violence: Narratives of Exclusion in Latin America) is about how Latin American cultural discourse responds to violence and inequality.
