Willaq Pirqa, the Cinema of My Village (whose original title is Willaq Pirqa, el cine de mi pueblo, ) is a 2022 Peruvian-Bolivian Quechua-language comedy-drama film directed by César Galindo and written by Galindo, Augusto Cabada and Gastón Vizcarra. It tells the story of Sistu, a 13-year-old boy who lives in a community in Cusco, he discovers the magic of cinema, but the language barrier prevents the villagers from enjoying the movies.
The film was selected as the Peruvian entry for Best Ibero-American Film at the 38th Goya Awards, but was not nominated.
Sistu and his small community in the Andes discover the magic of cinema. This meeting causes a stir but also confronts them with their culture and highlights the limitations of the community to understand and read Spanish. As a solution, they choose Sistu so that every week he goes to town to see a movie and tells it to everyone in the square. One day he finds the paddock empty, the cinema has left.... Sistu's illusion of telling the weekly story to the people who are waiting for him, makes him create his own cinema, with his own actors, with his own culture and above all, in his own language.
The actors participating in this film are:
In 2015, the film was a beneficiary of the Economic Stimulus of the Ministry of Culture, in the competition for fiction feature film projects in native languages. The subsequent filming, in Maras and Moray, Cusco, took place over five months.
Karin Zielinski composed the original soundtrack for the film. Wind, string and percussion instruments such as the Andean violin were implemented. The musicians Rubén Concha (quenas, zampoñas, legüero bass drum, charango and guitar), Andrés Chimango Lares (Andean violin) and MarÃÂa Elena Pacheco (violin) also participated.
The film had its world premiere on August 4, 2022, at the 26th Lima Film Festival. It was commercially released on December 8, 2022 in Peruvian theaters.
Willaq Pirqa, the Cinema of My Village drew 42,000 viewers beginning in its sixth week in theaters and ending that same week with over 50,000 viewers. In its ninth week it drew more than 75,000 viewers. In its tenth week in theaters, it exceeded 80,000 viewers, ending its run with 83,382 viewers after 14 weeks. Becoming the most watched Quechua-language film in Peru.