Mission Kipi

Distributed by Pragda, 1161 Bedford Avenue, #1211 Brooklyn, NY 11216Produced by Sonaly Tuesta, Javier Anaya, Martina Sottile, and Guillermo SemproniiDirected by Sonaly Tuesta2024, Streaming, 81 mins “Hi, I’m Kipi, an ecological and intercultural robot.” That’s how the film’s titular character introduces herself. The heart of the film, however, is Kipi’s creator, Peruvian high school teacher and roboticist Walter Velásquez. Framed against the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown, and aftermath, the film explores Kipi’s creation, Velásquez’s reasons for doing so, and the rich heritage of Peruvian Andean indigenous communities and cultures. Running just a little over an hour and a quarter long, Mission Kipi feels both just the right length but also not long enough, leaving the viewer wanting more. The content is sincere, heartwarming, and fascinating, and the film’s slow pacing feels thoughtful and appropriate for the subject matter, as well as reflecting the slower pace of life during lockdown. As COVID-19 started spreading across the world, schools in Peru—like everywhere else—shuttered and sent their students home to do remote learning. Concerned by the fact that many of his students lived in remote areas without reliable wifi or appropriate technology, Velásquez began traveling to visit his students at their homes. A roboticist, he first started by recording lectures to flash drives and converting old radios to be able to play the lectures. He would leave these devices with students so that they could continue learning their lessons. Eventually, he got the idea to create a robot that could interact with students and not only teach them but learn from them. Kipi was born of humble, available and salvaged parts, with an old radio for a head, flashlights and welder glasses for eyes, a multi-gallon water jug for a torso, and a scale for feet. Velásquez intentionally built her to be a female robot to counteract traditional gender-related expectations of who in a family was prioritized to go to school—typically the male children—and to inspire his female students to continue to learn and achieve their dreams. The film then intersperses scenes of Kipi’s creation and programming with scenes of Kipi and Velásquez traveling to remote parts of Andean Peru—sometimes by burro, sometimes hitching a ride, and sometimes even by foot across rugged terrain. Throughout the rest of the film, we learn that Kipi’s role is not only to teach but to serve as a cultural ambassador of sorts. Kipi speaks strictly in Quechua, one of the original 48 languages that survived throughout Peru’s tumultuous history. As Velásquez and Kipi travel to each indigenous community, they meet with elders and students and learn aspects of that culture in order to preserve it and share it with others. One visit results in learning about chuño, a national dish made from dehydrated Peruvian potatoes, as well as the methods of cultivating those potatoes. Other visits to indigenous communities have Velásquez and Kipi learning about dances, music, festivals such as Corpus Christi, and traditional ecological practices. That knowledge is then shared with other communities, and many scenes show the adults of the community learning right alongside the students. The ultimate message of the film, and Kipi’s reason for being, comes from an interaction he has with her later in the film. “But if you treasure all that information,” he says, “you’ll be able to tell the people from the future all you know. Who we were in these pandemic years, who we humans were, how we behaved, what has affected us, what was our culture like. You have to save all of that for the future.” Kipi, as well as the children of the Peruvian Andes, is a message of hope for that future, and the importance of an education, even in the face of seeming unsurmountable hardships, is not underscored. Mission Kipi is a film that lingers on long after you’ve finished it, and the messages it shares are universal. It comes highly recommended.

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