This Indigenous voice actor is on a quest to dub Disney’s ‘The Lion King’ into Quechua

For many children living in remote towns across the Peruvian Andes, movies only exist in the form of bootleg DVDs — Hollywood films dubbed in Spanish or in English with Spanish subtitles.

Many of these kids, however, only fully understand Quechua, an Indigenous language spoken by around 10 million people across multiple South American countries.

Enter Fernando Valencia, a voice actor raised in the Andean town of Huanimpampa.

“I thought, ‘I’d love to give this group of kids a chance to watch at least a little bit of these movies in their own language.’ And I didn’t want to only do a literal translation but make the extra effort to provide a proper dub with lip-sync where the characters’ voices sound exactly the way they should,” Valencia said in Spanish, changing his voice to a cartoonish tone during a recent video interview from his home in Cusco.

And so Valencia, in a makeshift recording studio, started dubbing fragments of popular Hollywood films into Quechua. The end result — scenes from movies like “The Lion King,” “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back,” and “Ice Age” — became known as the Quechua Clips.

When the videos went viral online and received local news coverage, institutions started asking Valencia if he had dubbed any of those titles in full. He had not but wished to try. Thus began his ongoing quest to dub Disney’s animated classic “The Lion King” into Quechua in its entirety.

Valencia’s efforts over the course of several years are documented in filmmaker Augusto Zegarra’s first feature, “Runa Simi,” a heartfelt story of language activism in action that premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival and is currently playing in theaters in L.A.

The challenge, as depicted in the film, is twofold for Valencia.

First, he needed to cast a group of Quechua speakers to voice the characters. In the original clips, his young son Dylan voiced Simba, while Valencia took on Timon and Pumbaa.

Valencia entered a David versus Goliath dynamic by attempting to reach out to the Walt Disney Co. in order to obtain permission to legally create the Quechua dub of the film.

Zegarra first became aware of Valencia’s work when a documentarian friend showed him the Quechua clip of “Hakuna Matata.” Valencia found the perfect Quechua adaptation for the carefree song, naming it “Hakuchu Munayta,” which roughly means “let’s move forward with love.” The filmmaker says he was surprised to learn Valencia created the dubs all on his own with only his son as ally.

Zegarra initially proposed a short film, but given Valencia’s larger quest to connect with Disney, the project quickly evolved into a feature film.

“From the start, we knew it would be difficult, but the world has also been getting smaller thanks to social media,” said Zegarra. “I generally consider myself a positive person and a dreamer, but then I met Fernando and realized that the way he dreams is on another plane entirely.”

Valencia says he partnered with with Zegarra because he understood his intent better than most institutions. That kinship, he said, is a gift that made for a collaboration between two artists with equal agency.

“This is not a film where an outsider observes an Indigenous individual as an object of research with admiration, pity or any other emotion,” Valencia said. “Instead, Augusto has allowed me to take part in the decisions he made regarding the film.”

Though there are those who think Indigenous cultures must be kept in isolation so that they are not tainted or transformed by outside influences, Valencia believes in preservation through dissemination. The more a language like Quechua can find ways to exist in our globalized world, especially in pop culture, the stronger its foothold will be.

“If I keep my language and culture in a fragile little jar, someone will come along and trample it, and it will disappear forever,” he said. “But if I open this little jar and build bridges, it will be difficult to eliminate it because it will be integrated into the world.”

To that end, there are plenty of other creative people bringing the Quechua language into unexpected spaces. “There’s a young woman singing trap music in Quechua, a young man making “Q-pop,” which is a Quechua take on K-pop, and others producing poetry and literature,” said Zegarra. “Every drop helps to bring greater visibility to the language.”

But why “The Lion King”? Of all the movies Valencia could have chosen to dub in full, what made the “Hamlet”-inspired 1994 hit about a lion cub fighting for the throne the ideal vehicle for his pursuit?

It was the first movie Valencia watched in its entirety as a child. During the interview, he pointed to the outdated black-and-white television set where he watched the animated gem with commercials on a broadcast channel.

Valencia also finds a clear parallel between the narrative about a young lion being exiled and how the Quechua language has been neglected.

“We see a character who is banished, who lives on the margins, and who eventually must return to where he belongs,” he said.

At one point, Valencia considered focusing his efforts on dubbing a “Star Wars” film, but, aside from the complex mythology of that saga, he felt “The Lion King” would have a stronger connection with people who live in the countryside given how significant the intricacies of the cycle of life and the connection to nature are to the family-friendly tale.

Curiously, there are no words for “lion” or “king” in Quechua (neither existed in the reality of the ancient Quechua speakers). That’s why Valencia’s version uses the Spanish-language title and it’s called “El Rey León Runasimipi” (“The Lion King” in Quechua). As for the title of the documentary, “Runa Simi,” it’s the name of the Quechua language in Quechua and translates to ”language of the people.”

“It felt like a statement to have someone who has never heard of the Quechua language, maybe someone in Europe or the U.S., ask what runa simi is and then being able to tell them: ‘You’re already speaking it! By saying the words runa simi, you’re already using the language,’” said Zegarra.

“Runa Simi” is allowed to screen commercially in the U.S. thanks to the fair use doctrine, which grants the filmmakers permission to use images from “The Lion King,” a copyrighted work. Internationally, however, the documentary doesn’t have permission for using them. It’s why the film hasn’t been released in commercial theaters in Peru, even though Zegarra and Valencia have already dubbed the documentary into Quechua.

Zegarra remains hopeful that he and Valencia will eventually be able to directly approach someone at Disney both about the documentary and about Valencia’s Quechua-language version of “The Lion King.”

That their goal is not without precedent keeps their faith alive.

Zegarra points to how Tweedie Waititi, the sister of Oscar-winning director Taika Waititi, has partnered with Disney to dub multiple titles into te reo Māori, a language spoken by about 200,000 people. If a language with such a small number of speakers merits a dub, their hope is that Disney would consider the 10 million people who speak Quechua.

Zegarra is conscious that, as with most things in the entertainment business in the U.S., it’s often about who you know. Thankfully, his documentary has caught the attention of notable champions. Peter and Benjamin Bratt, whose mother Eldy Banda is an Indigenous activist of Quechua descent, signed on to support the project as executive producers.

“We were drawn to ‘Runa Simi’ because the film brings together so much of what matters to us: Indigenous voices, stories rooted in community, and the right of every culture to see itself represented with dignity,” the Bratt brothers said in a joint statement.

“There’s an irrepressible charm to this father and son, but what moved us most was the intimacy of Fernando and Dylan’s story. Their dream of bringing Quechua to the screen is an act of love for their language and their people, and for the generations who deserve to hear it,” the siblings added.

Valencia knows the odds aren’t in his favor. Getting a corporation like Disney to approve and legitimize his Quechua dub is a tall order. But the smiles of the children and even adults who had never watched a movie in their native language before he screened it for them in their communities is proof enough that what he’s doing responds to a higher calling.

Although Valencia’s first contact with voice work happened through cassette tapes of El cholo Cirilo, a stereotypical Indigenous character performed by comedian Ubaldo Huamán, he soon discovered there was power in what he could do with his voice. And while he describes himself as a “walking cliché” because what he watched on TV, especially U.S. productions, shaped his worldview, Valencia has taken those lessons and repurposed them.

“There’s a line of dialogue from ‘The Simpsons’ that my brother always reminds me of. Homer is talking to someone and they say, ‘To succeed in this world, you only need one good idea,’” Valencia recalls speaking in Homer’s voice, as the beloved jaundiced character sounds in the voice of actor Humberto Vélez in the Latin American Spanish dub.

That bright idea could be the key to not only preserve Quechua, but to further spread its seeds.

“Runa Simi” is currently showing at the Laemmle Monica Film Center.

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