Peru’s official submission for the ‘Best International Feature’ category at the 93rd Academy Awards in 2021 is Melina Leon’s directorial debut Song Without a Name, which premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival in the Directors’ Fortnight. Beyond being the first Peruvian woman to premiere at the festival in this sidebar, Leon’s striking debut, which revisits a dark period of her country’s past and is informed with semi-autobiographical inspiration, has gone on to play at hundreds of venues on the festival circuit to considerable acclaim. IONCINEMA.com had a chance to meet the filmmaker at the 2019 edition of PYIFF (watch here) and here I cap off the final stretch for the film discussing her influences, casting, the considerable amount of time which went into her long-gestating debut, as well as plans for her next project.