Director: Augusto Zegarra
Producers: Paloma Iturriaga, Claudia Chavez
Logline: Fernando, a Peruvian single father, sits in an audio-recording room with his young son Dylan, recording voices together from Spanish into Quechua — their indigenous language. Fernando provides careful but spirited direction to Dylan, who nails the specific intonation. What seems as a playful game between a father and son is actually a treasured creative hobby for Fernando, who has dubbed online clips of many animated movies into Quechua. As a voice actor who’s always had an interest in crafting voices and dialects, Fernando uses his platform as a radio host in his native Cusco to create content in Quechua, enabling this language to thrive and not be forgotten. “Our language Quechua,” affirms Fernando, “is like life itself.”
All too quickly, Fernando’s online hobby of dubbing film clips goes viral — and it spurs him to pursue his most ambitious goal yet: fully dub Disney’s animated “The Lion King” into Quechua. The creative hobby now becomes a real cultural endeavor.
Supported by Sundance Institute’s 2020 Documentary Fund.
“Runa Simi is a lovingly patient journey with Fernando, a young indigenous Peruvian man, whose life mission is to preserve the indigenous Quechua language. Director Augusto Zegarra and his team embed themselves with deep care and a palpable friendship behind the camera as they accompany Fernando on fulfilling his biggest dream — dubbing Disney’s The Lion King in Quechua to share with indigenous community in Peru. As we follow Fernando’s unwavering efforts to bring a classic film to young kids for whom these kinds of films have been inaccessible, the culminating screening will leave you crying the most happy tears.” — Andrea Alarcón
