Sundance 2025 Review: SPEAK, Heartfelt, Hopeful, Uplifting Doc

Every year, approximately 6,700 high-school students from 1,500 schools around the country participate in the National Speech and Debate Tournament (NSDT) in 42 distinct categories.

 

Chief among them is the Original Oratory category, the subject of the captivating documentary Speak, directed by Jennifer Tiexiera (Subject, P.S., Burn This Letter Pease) and Guy Mossman. Held every summer in Des Moines, IA, the tournament gives participants the chance to not only share their rhetorical gifts with audiences and judges alike, but also serves as important preparation for their college careers and beyond.

 

Closely following the tried-and-true template for sports- or competition-based documentaries, Speak centers on five high schoolers selected by Tiexiera and Mossman for their personalities, personal stories, and the likelihood, based on previous experiences, that they’d make it through the preliminary rounds (local, regional, and so forth) and reach the nationals (as they’re called). Not everyone makes it through to the nationals or the finals, of course, but success or failure(s)  ultimately matter less than the high schoolers getting the opportunity to share their individual stories with the audience.

 

Speak initially introduces us to Esther Oyetunji. the formidable, two-time winner of the Original Oratory award and the odds-on favorite to win a third, record-breaking title in a row. Just spending a few minutes with Esther and it’s abundantly clear why she’s won twice before and ia likely to win again: she’s a generationally gifted orator, passionate and persuasive in alternate measure, attuned to the emotional content inherent in language and wedding emotion to well-researched, thoughtful intellectual argument.

 

The daughter of a Nigerian-born Christian pastor, it’s also obvious where Esther learned and honed her rhetorical gifts, at the knee and later, the pulpit where her father delivered his weekly sermons. Much of her life remains devoted to her church and its social/communal activities. Though she later says she prefers policy over politics, the latter might be her true calling.

 

The contenders for Esther's title are no less impressive: Mfaz Mohamed Ali, a young Muslim woman born to Sudanese immigrants, and a TikTok influencer whose controversy-courting speech focuses on the uses of public/social humiliation to silence dissent; the Texas born-and-raised Noor Garoui, whose deeply felt relationship with and advocacy for her younger, disabled brother moves her underdog status into cheer-worthy territory; Minnesota high schooler Samuel Schaefer, a recently outed gay teen keen on exploring the uses and misuses of “weaponized nostalgia” in his speech; and Noah Chao-Detiveaux, whose focused essay on suicide involves the death of a close family member.

 

Spun as part personal essay, part performance art, the rules of Original Oratory require each participant to deliver a 10-minute speech in front of a panel of judges and audiences, often repeatedly at the same level of competition and later, after months of refinement through months of trial-and-error, at the nationals in Iowa (if they’re lucky). With the not infrequent help of dedicated high school teachers, rhetoric coaches, and, of course, family members, each participant highlighted in Speak receives the opportunity to prove themselves, if not by stopping Esther from winning a third consecutive title in the Original Oratory category, then by proving themselves worthy of the audience’s time and interest.

 

And in the latter, they most certainly do. Their multifaceted stories, both singular and universal, will leave audiences with a sense of hope and optimism, however fleeting, when the credits roll on Speak.