Surinamese director Ruben Cabenda took his inspiration for the short animated film Töngö sondi from the story of the Tower of Babel. Wriggling tongues form a tower, tear off limbs, crawl out of mouths, are trampled. A man loses his tongue, which is eaten with a fork, another tongue tries in vain to return to a mouth.

The surrealist animation, presented within an immersive installation, depicts the intimate entanglement of language and identity, oppression and the legacy of colonialism in a way that is as intense as it is minimalistic. The Saramaccan title Töngö sondi literally means ‘things about a tongue’, with tongue referring to language. The Saramaccans are one of the six Maroon peoples in Suriname, descendants of enslaved people who originally came from West and Central Africa.

Cabenda, who trained at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, shows how language is not only a means of communication, but also a carrier of history, culture and identity.

Winner of the Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant 2024.