By Phil Vine
Film-maker Carl Naus relocated from Auckland to Ōtepoti Dunedin to start a co-operative café and bakery.
When Carl started putting on Sri Lankan homestyle banquets at Yours Café, Baghya Janethri Harath happened to stop by one Thursday evening.
Baghya was in the city doing a master's in physiology at the University of Otago.
"I was always kind of a little freaky guy when my parents used to get fish and stuff, and whole fish, and I'd love to look at the gills and things like that."
Baghya came for the food but stayed for the inclusive kaupapa. She ended up working there part-time.
So began a friendship that blossomed into a documentary team.
Mother Tongue is the name of their new film, which is due out next month.
Baghya was born in Colombo. Carl's mum is from Sri Lanka.
Carl was set to visit his food suppliers in Sri Lanka when he got the idea for the documentary.
One night he said to Baghya: "You should just come with me and then we can make a proper film about this.
"You can be the presenter, I'll shoot and do the directing and then it'll be fine."
Baghya did not have experience with anything like it before but was curious and good at talking to people.
She said okay. "By that stage (I) didn't know the guy, it could go one of two ways."
What they have produced is a deep dive into the production of food in their homeland.
There are wild goose chases for elusive spices, hilarious scenes with Baghya trying her hand at making local dishes, wide-eyed wanderings through ancient food forests and some eye-opening stories about the harsh lives of people who make the ingredients they serve at the café.
"We heard some, like, horror stories of farmers making little to no money, or they've had a really bad weather season and they can't grow another year, and the situation is so dire that maybe they would consider committing suicide," says Baghya.
Families produce basic ingredients like rice, cinnamon, and coconuts, which we might take for granted here in Aotearoa.
Carl said: "I'm not sure if people in New Zealand understand that relationship between a rich country like ours and a country that's being extracted from like that.
"And I think we're so acutely aware of it. We wanted to bring that story out in a way that is entertaining and fun and delicious."
Baghya said they came back with a completely different world view.
"It's really changed things for me I think.
"There's just this question mark of where has everything come from and what are the people like? What have they had to go through for me to live in such excess and comfort?
"So far I'm only 23. I've got so many years of consuming to do probably but it'll definitely be more informed."
Carl believes people should understand their food supply chains.
"I think a lot of people who do go in this direction of wanting to understand food supply chains or the production of things, approach it in a very black-and-white, moralistic way.
"Where does it have the sticker on it? Does it have the climate-neutral sticker? Does it have the organic sticker? Does it have the fair-trade sticker?
"But all those things, sure, they give us some information, but they also obscure a whole bunch of stuff.
"There are a lot of organisations that might just be box ticking to try and get a sticker and are missing out on other things.
"Like it doesn't tell you if the person who's growing the pepper is having a good time."
"I don't know, I think it's about the way you approach it. Like you can't, you can't be pure in that. You have to accept that.
"Being somebody living in a society like ours, everything you eat is going to have some exploitation somewhere down the supply chain, right?
"And you can't like absolve yourself of that just by eating in a certain way.
"Like that also doesn't fix the problem, right? Like it's much wider than like just buying the correct banana."
Mother Tongue is due out in December.
