While Tamino Beba attends class in Fairfax County, thousands of people, more than 4,000 miles away, are watching the West Springfield High School freshman on the silver screen. Tamino just made his acting debut in the German movie, Woodwalkers, and his education in Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) prepared him to work on the foreign film set.

Based on a popular German children’s book series, Woodwalkers follows a group of teenagers who can shape-shift into animals. They all attend a secret boarding school in the Rocky Mountains of the western U.S. Tamino’s character, Shadow Feather, can turn into a raven and plays a crucial role in the movie's beginning. “He's the character who discovers the main character,” Tamino explains, “because the principal sends him and his twin sister out to scout out possible shapeshifters.” Filming happened in Germany, Italy, and Austria, primarily in the Alps. 

Tamino’s father brought the open audition to his attention. “I was kind of like, ‘That’s cool,’ because I’ve always wanted to do acting,” said Tamino. When he learned he landed the role after going through five rounds of auditions, he said he “ran through the house.”

Tamino participated in the FCPS Dual Language Immersion (DLI) program at Orange Hunt Elementary School. In the DLI program, students starting in kindergarten or first grade spend half the school day learning math, science, and health in a foreign language. During the second half of the day, they learn in English focusing on English language arts and social studies. Orange Hunt’s DLI program teaches classes in German. Other FCPS elementary schools offer DLI programs in French, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. Tamino’s grandparents live in Germany, which factored into his decision to apply for the German DLI program at Orange Hunt. 

The Center for Applied Linguistics notes there are many advantages of bilingualism and biliteracy. Tamino experienced many of those benefits firsthand while working on a German film set: not only did it give him an outstanding job opportunity, but it also gave him the ability to communicate with people he otherwise wouldn’t know how. “It made it so that I could understand what’s being said to me,” he said. “I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to act in a completely foreign movie.”

Understanding the direction spoken in German likely helped Tamino during the more challenging filming days. He recalled one day when the cast and crew shot a scene set in the school cafeteria, housed inside a large glass atrium, on a hot day in Germany. “It was like a big greenhouse with fifty kids in there,” Tamino recalls. “Even though it was really hot outside, the moment I walked out of there, it felt like the coldest I’ve ever felt.”

Before he filmed a movie in a fake school, Tamino attended the real Orange Hunt Elementary School in Springfield. Orange Hunt German Immersion Teacher Rob Schonberger taught Tamino in fifth grade. “Tamino was always well-liked by his classmates,” he said. “I remember he taught my class how to make an origami sphere. He seems to really have found his niche and I wish him success in his future endeavors.”

Students who complete the FCPS elementary DLI program enter a transition program in middle school. In Tamino’s case, that meant continuing his study of the German language at Washington Irving Middle School. Tamino filmed Woodwalkers at the time. “He balanced his schoolwork in Springfield and busy filming schedule in Germany like a pro," said Irving German Teacher Karlena Sakas. "A big shout out to Tamino and his family for his continued linguistic and theatrical success! I can’t wait to see his film and hope we can have a screening here at Irving!”

Now in his first year at West Springfield High School, Tamino is in the next stage of the program, taking an advanced German class.

“He’s a great German student. His writing is good. His speaking is good,” said West Springfield German Language Teacher Claudia Naworol. “I’m glad to have Tamino in my class and I wish him all the best for his future movie career.”

Tamino plans to do much more in the future. He will appear in more movies — the second installment in the Woodwalkers series has already wrapped filming. “I definitely want to pursue this and I’m just going to keep getting better,” he said. He also hopes to pursue other interests, such as fashion design. 

To students just starting out in the DLI program at Orange Hunt, Tamino has this advice to share: “Know why you want to learn German,” he said. “I felt good learning a language, but you have to want to actually learn it. Know that you want it, and know why you want it.”

Learn how to register your child for the Dual Language Immersion Program.

Watch news coverage on Tamino Beba from NBC4.