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JARIPEO

JARIPEO

EFRAÍN MOJICA + REBECCA ZWEIG | USA | 2026 | 71 MIN | SPANISH EST

EFRAÍN MOJICA + REBECCA ZWEIG | USA | 2026 | 71 MIN | SPANISH EST

IN-CINEMADocumentaryGAME ON: QUEER SPORTS

Subtitles: English

NOV 21 / 13:00Cinéma JA de Sève (LB-125) | Concordia University 1400 Boul. de Maisonneuve O. Montréal, QC H3G 1M8 (métro Guy-Concordia)

Synopsis

Furtive glances, sexy fashion, the alcohol-fuelled excuse to flirt, dance and sneak past the fences: rodeo culture offers more than bull riding. In intimate profiles of queer Michoacáns—from a free and femme church leader to a hypermasculine cowboy—Efraín Mojica attempts to deconstruct the traditions and contradictions of their roots. For as long as Mojica can remember, Mexico’s jaripeo bull-riding events have been part of their life—from bored childhood trips to teen cowboy fantasies to the present, lost in the packed crowd on a hot Christmas Day. The masculinized events are seeped in religion and booze, but within and often because of the strict codes, queer subcultures flourish. Mojica and Rebecca Zweig’s documentary lassos together these complexities, doing so in kinetic and sensual ways, fingers slipping down ropes, hips bucking on top of a bull. Together, the two directors maximize the filmic medium, combining frank, beautifully lensed conversations with mesmeric Super 8 footage, pulse-pounding music, and dreamy sequences: red lights flashing among dried corn stalks; a red-eyed mechanical bull, nose steaming. The film acting as a bridge between the vivid external and internal lives of a region and its defining rituals.

Trailer

Filmmaker Bio

Efraín Mojica (Co-director and protagonist) is a photographer, filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist from Michoacán, living in Mexico City. Their work has shown in galleries around the world including Kunstverein Neukolln and MZ Galleries in Berlin, Magia Roja in Barcelona, the Factory in Seattle and Museo Tlatelolco in Mexico City. Video art is central to Efraín’s work, and their filmmaking is heavily influenced by their conceptual art practice. In their first feature documentary, Jaripeo, they take an experimental approach, walking the line between the real and the subconscious.

Director's Statement

From its inception, creating Jaripeo has been a humbling experience for both of us. […] This project has taught both of us how to hold space for multiple truths: rural pride and queer celebration, beauty and discomfort, tradition and change. […] Jaripeo is, at its core, about relation: the way we relate to the self and the subconscious, how our encounters with others can deepen our self-knowledge and theirs.

Filmmaker Bio

Rebecca Zweig (Co-Director) is a filmmaker, journalist, and poet based in Mexico City. Her work is featured in The New York Times, The Nation, and Revista Nexos, among others, and has been supported by Chicken & Egg Pictures, the Sundance Institute, SFFILM, and the Points North Institute. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Teaching and Writing Fellow and a Mitchell/Burgess Scholar. Her filmmaking is shaped by her poetic practice that focuses on the cadences and metaphors of desire.

Producer

Sarah Strunin

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