(L–R) Sam Schaefer, Mfaz Mohamed Ali, Noor Garoui, Josh Gad, Esther Oyetunji, and Noah Detiveaux attend the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of “Speak.” at the Library Center Theatre on January 23, 2025, in Park City, UT. (Photo by Michael Hurcomb/Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival)
By Shelby Shaw
What do Oprah Winfrey, Brad Pitt, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Josh Gad all have in common? They’ve competed in the challenging pursuit of becoming a high school champion in oratory, a highly skilled and stylized mode of formal speaking, for which the prestigious national competition requires a recitation of your memorized writing in front of hundreds of people, including judges. Directors Jennifer Tiexiera and Guy Mossman use Speak. to follow Esther, Mfaz, Sam, Noah, and Noor: five promising high school students from Minnesota, Florida, and Texas, set on winning the title of champion in Original Oratory, which requires far more grit, determination, and revision than anticipated. “The kiddos,” as Tiexiera and Mossman call them, join the directors for the film’s Q&A after the January 23 premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, along with executive producer Josh Gad, who was the last two-time Original Oratory championship title holder (1998–1999). That is, until Esther, who now stands a few feet away, more recently overtook that honor.
“I thought it was just debate,” Mossman says. “In 2019 this world [of Original Oratory] was brought to my attention and I just couldn’t believe it.” Mossman began researching the field during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which his work as a director of photography was slowed down. He originally conceived the project to be a series. But after beginning to cast kids in 2022 from the thousands who participate in Original Oratory around the U.S., Tiexiera joined the project in 2023 and things began to come together. “I knew the power of speech and debate. Watching this gave me PTSD,” Gad jokes. “It’s so intense, and you don’t know until you’ve done it, the anxiety, the constant pacing and looking like a lunatic doing the speech again and again to yourself.” He adds, addressing the film’s subjects, “I had the luxury of doing bullshit speeches. You guys are doing world-saving stuff. And that is incredible. And that is so necessary. And so I knew I had to be a part of it.”
The young subjects of Speak. give viewers an honest look at the topics of their spoken essays and why they so fervently are devoted to their chosen social issues, including Esther looking past the deception of “protect the children” rhetoric; Noor recognizing caretakers of disabled siblings; Sam combating anti-LGBTQ+ policies; Noah having compassionate reflection on suicide; and Mfaz finding a way to overcome discrimination’s humiliation tactic to get back to a humane community.
Speak. is a powerful contemporary testament to the command of charismatic word choice, emotive timing and delivery, and the ambition of teenage minds to not be stopped by anything — or anyone. Telling their own stories as the months inch closer to the Nationals competition and students around the U.S. begin to get knocked out of the running, our young subjects present their diverse home lives and reasons for why their oration is so important to them. Giving in-depth, behind-the-scenes thinking to their causes, the students’ determination to raise awareness for their social concerns is inspiring, to say the least. In fact, Speak. may make you want to say a lot.
“We were all like ourselves,” Mfaz says at the premiere, about having the cameras around during filming. Esther agrees, “We’re all very used to speaking in front of crowds. It’s just a little different when everyone’s always watching what you’re doing.” She and Noah, standing next to her, joke about having to remind their teammates to watch their language when they’ve got microphones on. “Thank you all for trusting us to know when we wanted to say no, and when enough was enough, and you guys listened, and we appreciate that a lot,” Esther adds to the film team, as the audience interrupts with applause.
Culminating at the weeklong Nationals competition in Des Moines, Iowa, hundreds of competitors and judges narrow down to the top 277 orators, then the top 60, the top 30, the top 14, and finally the highest-scoring speakers who will take home the prized trophies. Repeatedly performing their earnest desires round after round to win the attention of the judges, stir their hearts, and provoke their minds, the competitors know that no matter how important their topic, no matter how personally pledged their need to see it be brought to the foreground, no matter how many hours they’ve practiced with their oration coaches back home, there will only be one winner on top at the end. And yet, watching Speak. proves that there are plenty of significant speakers worth listening to, along with those who sit at the top.
