Gibson to speak ancient tongue at Oscars

A scene from Gibson's film, Apocalypto

During a brief appearance on the Academy Awards held Sunday, Gibson will speak Maya, the only language in the film. His last movie, The Passion of the Christ, was in Latin and Aramaic.

"I wanted to shake up the stale action-adventure genre," Gibson said in an interview. "So I think we almost had to come up with something utterly different like this."

Apocalypto is set in pre-Columbian Mexico and is being shot on the fringe of southern Mexico's rain forests. It addresses the end of civilisations and contains warnings about environmental degradation and political fear-mongering.