With A Grateful Heart by Chris Gil

Have you ever noticed how silence can say more than words? Sometimes, what remains unspoken carries the deepest emotional weight. The 2017 film I Dream in Another Language, directed by Ernesto Contreras, explores this idea through the extinction of a fictional indigenous language called Zikril. At first glance, the story follows a linguist’s attempt to preserve a dying language. Yet beneath the surface, the film unfolds as a deeply moving meditation on loss, broken relationships, and the human need for connection.

Rather than treating language loss as a purely cultural or academic issue, the film reveals it as an emotional one. Through the long-standing silence between its two central characters, Evaristo and Isauro, I Dream in Another Language shows how fractured human bonds can lead to both personal and cultural suffering and, how healing often begins with the courage to reconnect.

When Language Survives or Dies, Through Relationships

At the center of the film is Zikril, a language spoken by only three people at the beginning of the story. Martín, a young linguist, travels to a remote village in Mexico to document it before it disappears forever. What he quickly discovers, however, is that the survival of the language depends on more than recording words.

The two remaining fluent speakers, Evaristo and Isauro, have not spoken to each other in decades due to a painful and unresolved conflict. Their silence becomes both a literal barrier to preserving Zikril and a symbolic one that prevents emotional healing.

This dynamic makes one idea unmistakably clear:

• Language cannot survive in isolation
• It lives through relationships
• It carries memory, emotion, and shared experience

The film suggests that when relationships fracture, language loses its living context. The death of a language, then, is not only a cultural loss, it is the loss of a shared emotional world.

Cinematic Techniques That Deepen the Sense of Isolation

Contreras reinforces these themes through powerful visual and narrative choices. The jungle setting creates a feeling of timelessness, mirroring the emotional stasis between Evaristo and Isauro. The past lingers, unresolved, just as their silence persists.

Several techniques stand out:

• Flashbacks that contrast memory with present reality
• Light and shadow to emphasize nostalgia and emotional distance
• Minimal dialogue, allowing silence to become a form of speech

When Isauro dies without reconciling with Evaristo, much of Zikril dies with him. Yet the true tragedy is not only linguistic extinction, it is unresolved grief. Evaristo, left as the last speaker, embodies both cultural loss and profound loneliness.

One of the film’s most haunting moments occurs when Evaristo speaks Zikril into a cave believed to connect with the spirit world. His voice is met only by silence, echoing the emotional weight of everything left unsaid.

Language as a Poetic and Emotional Metaphor

In I Dream in Another Language, Zikril is more than a cultural artifact. It functions as a poetic device, lyrical, intimate, and sacred. Its loss feels deeply personal rather than abstract.

Some critics argue that the film romanticizes indigenous languages or oversimplifies cultural complexity by framing the story as a personal love narrative. Yet this critique overlooks the film’s intention. The movie does not present itself as a documentary. It is an artistic meditation.

Here, language becomes:

• A bridge between people
• A vessel for memory and emotion
• A way of knowing oneself through another

This idea resonates with a statement once shared by an Italian language teacher I deeply admired:

“The heart speaks most honestly in its native tongue; even when the words are lost, the feeling remains understood without translation” (Ferulli).

The film echoes this sentiment, suggesting that healing requires vulnerability and, the willingness to confront painful truths, even when language its elf begins to fail.

Why This Film Stays With Us

Ultimately, I Dream in Another Language is far more than a story about linguistic preservation. It is a reflection on silence, emotional estrangement, and the cost of leaving pain unspoken. Its layered storytelling, visual beauty, and emotional depth make it a quietly powerful cinematic experience.

The film reminds us that:

• The disappearance of a language mirrors broken human bonds
• Silence can protect us, but it can also imprison us
• Healing often begins when we choose to speak, in whatever language our truth resides
  

A Final Reflection

This film invites us to ask an uncomfortable but necessary question:
Where in our own lives have we allowed silence to replace connection?

If this reflection resonated with you, consider sharing your thoughts or exploring other posts on mindfulness, memory, and emotional healing on the blog. Sometimes, speaking, even imperfectly, is the first step back toward understanding.

Works Cited

Ferulli, Michele. Lecture. Dante Alighieri Academy, July 2010.

I Dream in Another Language. Directed by Ernesto Contreras, performances by Fernando Alvarez Rebeil, Eligio Meléndez, and Manuel Poncelis, Filmadora Nacional, 2017.