Pixar’s Coco is not done making us cry just yet. The colorful Día de Muertos film about a young boy meeting his ancestors while in the Land of the Dead earned two Oscars earlier this year. It proved to be a global phenomenon that put Mexican culture front and center. As with many other Disney-Pixar animated films, Coco was translated into close to 50 different languages and even made us fall in love with a Spanish dub. But despite all those translations there was one community in the Peruvian Andes who wouldn’t have been able to fully engage with the beloved movie were it not for Fernando Valencia and his eight year-old son Dylan. The two took it upon themselves to dub scenes between Miguel and Hector into Quechua, the indigenous language spoken by more than 2 million people in Peru. The goal: to make the heartwarming tale about family and legacy accessible to the schoolchildren in the Andean region whose first language is Quechua.
As reported by Noticias Telemundo, Fernando and Dylan singlehandedly worked on the translation, recording the dialogue themselves. Dylan, who’s not as fluent in the language, had to learn many of his lines phonetically though from the clips shown in the newscast, it’s clear he nailed Anthony Gonzalez’s touching voice performance as Miguel. Fernando has been showing the dubbed clips around schools in the Cuzco region, including the one run by his own mother. Touched to the point of tears, she shared with Noticias Telemundo the fact that she’s very proud of what her son and grandson accomplished, citing their endeavor as a gift to the kids she works with on a daily basis.
Oh, and as if that wasn’t enough of a heartwarming and tear-jerking story, know that if you watch the clip in full, you’ll get a snippet of “Remember Me” in Quechua sung by father and son. It’s a reminder that this film about how family can help you keep cultural traditions alive is not done inspiring audiences just yet.