Tongan filmmakers make last minute grab for Oscars nomination

A pair of Tongan creatives are edging closer to the Academy Awards with their award-winning short film Lea Tupu'anga / Mother Tongue, inspired by a personal true story.

Director Vea Mafile'o (The Panthers, For My Father’s Kingdom) and actress-writer Luciane Buchanan (Chief of War, The Night Agent) teamed up to explore loss of language and a young woman’s journey back to her roots.

To help elevate the film on a global stage, Buchanan called on her friend and Chief of War co-star Jason Momoa, who has signed on as executive producer and to champion the project to Academy members — a group of more than 10,500 people that decides the nominees.

“Vea actually had a great idea of bringing him on. She was like, ‘dude, he's perfect and he understands the subject matter and he's so passionate about the future of Pasifika stories and he loves working in Aotearoa, New Zealand’,” she says, adding she was a bit hesitant initially to reach out.

“His response was just so lovely. He was just like, I'd love to. This is awesome. I love it.”

Buchanan told Midday Report the Oscars campaign feels “pretty surreal", especially given how rare it is for a New Zealand or Pasifika short to break through. The last to be nominated (and win) for Best Live Action Short was New Zealand-born filmmaker, James Lucas, for The Phone Call in 2014. Before that was Taika Waititi's Two Cars, One Night in 2005.

“Moments like this are important to people’s trajectories,” she says.

The film draws from Buchanan’s relationship with her grandmother, who, after developing dementia, lost the ability to speak English.

“Growing up, I could speak a little Tongan and then as years went on, I just lost the ability,” she says.

“So in her later years, it was really difficult for us to even communicate. And there was something so beautiful in it. It was so funny at times because we're doing charades at some points. We're laughing at nothing. And then it was also like painful at the same time.”

Writing the script became a creative release.

“I was always the only like non-Asian girl in some rooms, non-white girl in this room, non-Black girl in this room. And I was like, I don't know where I stand,” Buchanan says.

“So I kind of wanted just to have an exercise of writing a story where I could play my own ethnicity, which is half Tongan, half white.”

Mafile'o says their tiny team is campaigning on the “back foot” against studios that have been pushing their films all year.

Self-promotion doesn’t come naturally, she says.

“[It] feels really whakama, like it's not a very comfortable place, I feel, for us to kind of be putting ourselves out there and saying, ‘hey, hey, look at us, look at us’. But literally, like we have to or we won't have a chance at all.”

Their late-minute scramble to submit the film — just an hour before the deadline — has since transformed into a wave of support.

A recent social-media post went viral, Buchanan says, rallying support of non-voters who simply wanted to uplift the filmmakers.

“It's just been so beautiful to see. And just a beautiful reminder of how we support each other.”

Mafile'o is also “blown away” by the response.

“It's like been so intense. You can hear by the crackle in my voice that I am like truly Tongan because I cry all the time.

“But we feel māfana which is like a warm feeling inside and so it's not a cry of sadness.

“We're just so really, really grateful that not just our village, our country is backing us up.”

Together, they hope Lea Tupu'anga / Mother Tongue clears a path for the next generation of Tongan storytellers creating films “for us, by us”.

The Oscars short list will be announced on 16 December (US time), with final nominations revealed on 22 January. The 2026 Academy Awards take place on 16 March (NZ time).