{"id":22531,"date":"2025-08-25T16:41:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T16:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/22531\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T16:41:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T16:41:11","slug":"watch-trailer-for-speak-documentary-on-teenage-oratory-competitors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/22531\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch Trailer For ‘Speak.’ Documentary On Teenage Oratory Competitors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE:<\/strong> A thousand words.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s roughly the verbal real estate available to the high schoolers who compete for the crown each year at the National Speech and Debate Association Championships (NSDA) in the category of Original Oratory. Such future luminaries as Oprah Winfrey, Brad Pitt, Josh Gad, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson all participated as teens.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the documentary Speak. a new batch of remarkable young people makes their bid for the title in what has been called the \u201cSuper Bowl of public speaking.\u201d Parameters: \u201cStudents deliver a self-written, ten-minute speech on a topic of their choosing,\u201d per the NSDA. \u201cCompetitors craft an argument using evidence, logic, and emotional appeals. Topics range widely, and can be informative or persuasive in nature. The speech is delivered from memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"L-R<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tL-R Film participant Noor Garoui, participant Mfaz Mohamed Ali, participant Noah Chao-Detiveaux, director Jennifer Tiexiera<\/a>, co-director Guy Mossman<\/a>, participant Sam Schaefer, and participant Esther Oyetunji at the Deadline 2025 Sundance Film Festival Studio.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDeadline via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film directed by Jennifer Tiexiera and co-directed by Guy Mossman, who also served as director of photography, premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival. It opens September 19 at Firehouse: DCTV\u2019s Cinema for Documentary Film in New York City in a theatrical run that will qualify it for Oscar consideration. Watch the exclusive trailer for Speak. above.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSpeak. follows five of the nation\u2019s top teenage speech competitors, capturing the euphoria of victory and the devastation of defeat as they craft and perform original oratories over the course of a 9-month season,\u201d notes a synopsis. \u201cWe witness them, their coaches and their parents as they fight to keep school speech programs alive amid budget cuts, book bans and censorship efforts that reach a fevered pitch during the 2024 election year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe synopsis adds, \u201cSpeak. captures the passion, joy and courage of unforgettable teens using their voices to change hearts and minds. This film is the perfect antidote for these fraught times in America \u2013 intense, funny, and most of all, hopeful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Esther<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tEsther Oyetunji in \u2018Speak.<\/a>\u2018<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVox Pop Films<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the five teens at the center of the film \u2014 Esther Oyetunji \u2013 was going for an unprecedented third straight national title in Original Oratory. At Sundance, Tiexiera told us she got interested in the documentary project after co-director Mossman sent her a video of Esther in a spellbinding oratorical display.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe sent me Esther doing her speech her sophomore year when she became the national champion for the first time,\u201d Tiexiera recalled. \u201cIt was definitely a moment where it was like hearing Obama speak for the first time and I was like, \u2018This girl is so young and so brilliant.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile there is inherent drama in a competition involving hopes, dreams, and nerves, Mossman emphasizes the film\u2019s larger dimensions.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe wanted to tell the story from the point of view of the piece that they\u2019re writing \u2014 if you can conceive of that as the piece they\u2019re writing as a character in and of itself \u2014 and allow the competition to be almost present but not necessarily in the foreground,\u201d Mossman told us. \u201cWhat\u2019s more important to us is to really spend time\u2026 at home with them and to try and tell a really intimate story about their lives and how it tied into the piece they\u2019re writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"(L-R)<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t(L-R) Jennifer Tiexiera, Josh Gad and Guy Mossman attend the \u201cSpeak.\u201d premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMaya Dehlin Spach\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tJosh Gad, one of the executive producers of the film, won the NSDA championships in Original Oratory in 1998 and 1999. Fellow EPs include Simon Kilmurry (who serves on the A.M.P.A.S. Board of Governors for the documentary branch), Lisa Hepner, Christoph Baaden, Abby Ellin, Joseph Wolfe, Polly Wolfe, Schultz Family Foundation, Hallee Adelman, Dawn Bonder, Daniel J. Chalfen, Marci Wiseman, Toby Nalbandian, Greg Schmidt, Sean Bradley, Lauren Lexton, Jenny Warburg, Jamie Wolf, Nathalie Seaver, Melony and Adam Lewis, J. Todd Harris, and Andrea Van Beuren.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeak. is produced by Pamela Griner, Guy Mossman, and Jennifer Tiexiera. Delaney Lynch and Jennifer Tiexiera edited the film. As noted above, Mossman shot the film. The original score was composed by Osei Essed.<\/p>\n

\n\tWatch the Speak. trailer above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: A thousand words. That\u2019s roughly the verbal real estate available to the high schoolers who compete for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[18,117,19316,19,17,19317,327,19318],"class_list":{"0":"post-22531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-guy-mossman","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-jennifer-tiexiera","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-speak"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}