Runa Simi — Cinematic UI for a Tribeca-Winning Film

Winner of the Albert Maysles Award for Best New Documentary Director Official Selection — Tribeca Festival 2025

Runa Simi is an award-winning Peruvian documentary directed by Augusto Zegarra. It follows Fernando Valencia, a Quechua voice actor and cultural activist from Cusco, as he embarks on an extraordinary mission: convincing The Walt Disney Company to authorize the first official Quechua dubbing of The Lion King.

What begins as one person's dream evolves into a story about cultural identity, language preservation, and the determination to ensure that one of the world's most iconic films can be experienced by future generations in the language of the Andes.

Premiering at Tribeca Festival 2025, the film received the Albert Maysles Award for Best New Documentary Director and has since been officially selected by more than 50 international film festivals, with screenings across 17 countries.

Founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff in New York, Tribeca Festival is one of the world's leading film festivals, internationally recognized for discovering outstanding independent filmmakers and award-winning documentaries.

After every official request to Disney went unanswered, Fernando reached out directly to Rob Minkoff, co-director of The Lion King. That conversation became one of the documentary's defining moments.

As Additional Visual Assets Designer at Conjunto Studio, I was responsible for translating the documentary's real social media conversations into cinema-ready, fully editable production assets.

The original screenshots couldn't be used for the big screen. They lacked the resolution, scalability, and editorial flexibility that post-production required. My job was to rebuild every interface from scratch so it could be projected in theaters and individually animated during editing.

16 Instagram conversation screenshots recreated (8 in English, 8 in Spanish)

4 Twitter/X posts recreated (2 in English, 2 in Spanish)

Each message bubble exported individually with its corresponding profile photo, giving the editing team full control over timing and animation

3 rounds of revisions with the director

Process: I researched the actual typefaces used by Instagram and Twitter at the time, matched them as closely as possible, and rebuilt every UI element: message bubbles, timestamps, avatars, read receipts, spacing, and layout. The director also provided visual references to modernize certain elements, so the final assets weren't just replicas but refined versions designed to read clearly at cinema scale.

All files were delivered organized and production-ready in Figma, Illustrator, and Photoshop.

Our team at Conjunto Studio worked directly with the director to develop the visual concept for the official poster. Through collaborative sessions, we explored ideas, references, and visual directions together.

Once the concept was defined, an external illustrator was brought in to execute the final artwork due to production timelines. The creative direction and final layout were handled by Conjunto Studio's lead.

Credits Project: Runa Simi (2025) Film Director: Augusto Zegarra Official Film Credit: Additional Art Assets (Conjunto Studio, Romanet Silva, Leticia Padilla) My Contribution: Recreated 20 social media interfaces as fully editable, production-ready assets for film post-production and large-format projection.