Runa Simi
- Sandro Mairata
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
This film will be shown on Long Island on April 20, 2026 and in New York City on April 21st.
RATING: 5/5 | By Sandro Mairata @smairata/ REFLEKTOR
“A patient meditation on language, fatherhood, power, and the economic calculations of the global entertainment industry”
Fernando Valencia is an enthusiastic radio host from Cusco with a mission: to dub Disney classic The Lion King (1994) into Quechua. This premise alone is enough to launch one of the best Peruvian documentaries produced in recent years, a patient and dedicated work spanning several years by director Augusto Zegarra, who complements the story of his charismatic protagonist with remarkable technical and cinematographic skill.
Runa Simi is this year's Willaq Pirqa; a largely Quechua-speaking film for a general audience, with positive intentions and good vibes, which received a five-minute standing ovation in the packed NOS Hall at PUCP—with a more than enthusiastic Salvador del Solar applauding at several other moments during the “question and answer” session.
Zegarra turns a specific gesture—a father and son in Cusco dubbing The Lion King into Quechua—into a patient meditation on language, fatherhood, and power, where every formal decision serves as a commentary on who has the right to tell stories and in what language. The documentary moves with a deceptive calm: beneath the surface of the affectionate daily life between Fernando and Dylan lies a geopolitical dispute over the value of indigenous languages in the face of Disney's cultural machinery and the economic calculations of the global entertainment industry.
Zegarra chooses Fernando's home as the gravitational center of the story, and that choice is political rather than merely observational. The kitchen, the radio booth, and the improvised dubbing studio are spaces where the Quechua language unfolds in its affective, playful, domestic dimension, far from institutional discourses on “rescue” or “heritage.” In the rehearsals between father and son, in the clumsy repetitions of Simba's dialogues, the film captures something that cultural bureaucracy often overlooks: the continuity of a language depends less on political summits than on the daily obstinacy of those who speak it while playing, scolding, or consoling.
The device is simple and rigorous: the camera accompanies, rarely intrudes, and opts for proximity without turning Fernando into a martyr or a folk hero. This ethic of observation—very conscious of the tradition of Latin American observational documentary, but also of a certain contemporary festival sobriety—allows the epic to infiltrate the seemingly trivial: an unanswered phone call, a poorly soundproofed radio booth, a bus trip to a community in the sacred valley are charged with a silent gravity.
Runa Simi also poses a dilemma for film critics and purist cinephiles, for whom dubbing films is nothing short of a curse. Borges once spoke of “an evil artifice called dubbing”; today, this stance dictates that “films should be watched in their original language” or that “dubbing mutilates the film experience.” Since Runa Simi is an impeccable film that champions the success of a protagonist dedicated to dubbing—and calls on its viewers to be part of that support—we will have to see and read what is said about it.
Year of Release: | 2025 |
Director | |
Producer | Benjamin Bratt Peter Bratt Dominique Bravo Deborah Danson Forrest Danson Bill Harnisch Ruth Ann Harnisch Paloma Iturriaga Claudia Chávez Lévano Alpita Patel Ellen Schneider Augusto Zegarra |
Cast | Dylan Valencia |
IMDB |
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