Indigenous language created for film

A team of linguists has created a variant of an indigenous language which they have called Zikril in order to shoot the film “Sueño en otro idioma” (“I Dream in Another Language”) by Mexican filmmaker Ernesto Contreras.

This Mexico/Netherlands co-production explores the world of a dying language through the voice of its last two speakers.

For this argument, Contreras develops a story of love and friendship set in an indigenous background, mixed with magic realism in which the language becomes a part of the narrative elements.

Zikril was made especially for “I Dream in Another Language” because the scriptwriter and the director didn't want to use real indigenous languages, and thus, the crew turned to lingüists to help them create a new language with its own alphabet and rules.

The film in itself is about the last two speakers of Zikril, who fought 50 years ago and have never spoken to each other again. A young and idealist linguist will face the challenge of getting them to talk to each other again if he ever hopes to obtain a record of this dying language.

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