Runa Simi
Director: Augusto Zegarra
Producers: Paloma Iturriaga, Claudia Chavez
Logline: Fernando, a Peruvian single father, sits in an audio-recording room together with his younger son Dylan, recording voices collectively from Spanish into Quechua — their indigenous language. Fernando gives cautious however spirited route to Dylan, who nails the precise intonation. What appears as a playful sport between a father and son is definitely a treasured artistic passion for Fernando, who has dubbed on-line clips of many animated films into Quechua. As a voice actor who’s all the time had an curiosity in crafting voices and dialects, Fernando makes use of his platform as a radio host in his native Cusco to create content material in Quechua, enabling this language to thrive and never be forgotten. “Our language Quechua,” affirms Fernando, “is like life itself.”
All too shortly, Fernando’s on-line passion of dubbing movie clips goes viral — and it spurs him to pursue his most bold objective but: totally dub Disney’s animated “The Lion King” into Quechua. The artistic passion now turns into an actual cultural endeavor.
Supported by Sundance Institute’s 2020 Documentary Fund.
“Runa Simi is a lovingly affected person journey with Fernando, a younger indigenous Peruvian man, whose life mission is to protect the indigenous Quechua language. Director Augusto Zegarra and his staff embed themselves with deep care and a palpable friendship behind the digicam as they accompany Fernando on fulfilling his largest dream — dubbing Disney’s The Lion King in Quechua to share with indigenous neighborhood in Peru. As we observe Fernando’s unwavering efforts to deliver a traditional movie to younger children for whom these sorts of movies have been inaccessible, the culminating screening will go away you crying probably the most comfortable tears.” — Andrea Alarcón
