Runa Simi

A joyful and inspiring Peruvian documentary directed by Augusto Zegarra, Runa Simi (2025) follows a father and son whose dream of bringing a beloved animated classic into Quechua becomes a moving act of cultural pride, language justice and resistance.

🤝 CO-PRESENTED BY HOT DOCS

📅 Date: Saturday, August 1, 2026
🕘 Time: 4:45 PM
📍 Venue: Carlton Imagine Cinemas, Toronto
🗣 Language: Quechua, Spanish and English with English subtitles
🎟 Limited seating – reserve early!

Synopsis

Fernando Valencia is a Peruvian voice artist, Indigenous activist and devoted single father living in Cusco. Together with his young son Dylan, he creates Quechua-language versions of scenes from animated films, sharing them online with audiences eager to see and hear stories in their own language.

When their videos gain widespread attention, Fernando embarks on his most ambitious project yet: dubbing Disney’s The Lion King entirely into Quechua. What begins as a personal dream becomes a powerful journey through fatherhood, community and the fight to keep an ancestral language present for future generations.

Directed by Augusto Zegarra, Runa Simi had its world premiere in the Documentary Competition at the 2025 Tribeca Festival, where Zegarra received the Albert Maysles Award for Best New Documentary Director. The film was also previously presented in Toronto by Hot Docs as part of its Doc Soup series.

Co-presented by Hot Docs

This special screening of Runa Simi is co-presented by Hot Docs and the Peruvian Film Festival in Toronto, bringing audiences together to celebrate documentary cinema, cultural preservation and the power of storytelling in Indigenous languages.

Follow us on social @peruvianfilmfest or visit our website for more information:
peruvianfilmfestival.com

TICKET POLICY

Tickets are non-refundable and non-exchangeable.
All tickets are per person.
Entry is on a first-come, first-served basis. No assigned seating.