*Worldwide FESTIVAL Rights
jaripeo
directed by Efraín Mojica & Rebecca Zweig
Mexico, USA, France / 75 Mins / Spanish, English
Logline:
JARIPEO is a feature hybrid documentary that journeys to Michoacán’s hypermasculine rodeos. What starts as a celebration of tradition, descends into the subconscious of memory, queer desire, and longing. A reckoning with the wounds and beauty of a home left behind.
Synopsis:
Every Christmas in Penjamillo, Michoacán, the annual jaripeo unites locals and returning U.S. migrants in a celebration of cowboy culture, nostalgia, and masculinity, while beneath the spectacle a hidden queer subculture quietly unfolds. Filmmaker Efraín, who grew up between Penjamillo and Riverside, California, blends personal experience with Super 8 footage, stylized memory, and raw verité to interrogate the machismo at its core. Through encounters with Noé, a macho cowboy living partly in secret, and Joseph, a flamboyant jaripeo superfan and community pillar, the film becomes an intimate journey of self-recognition within a traditionally masculine world.
-
-
Efraín Mojica is a Michoacán-born artist based in Mexico City. Their multidisciplinary work, shown from Berlin to Mexico City, explores light, sound, and matter through a conceptual art lens. Video art is central to their practice. Jaripeo is their first feature film.
Rebecca Zweig is a Mexico City-based filmmaker and writer. Her work appears in The New York Times and The Nation, with support from Sundance and Chicken & Egg Pictures. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, her filmmaking is shaped by her poetic practice. Jaripeo is her first feature film.
-
2026
World Premiere: Sundance FF (NEXT)
International / European Premiere: Berlinale (Panorama)
Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
UK Premiere: Glasgow Film Festival
True/False
Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival
CPH:DOX
One World Int'l Human Rights Film Festival
London Premiere: BFI Flare FF
Docville
Salem International Film Festival
Full Frame Festival
Wicked Queer
RiverRun International Film Festival
Milwaukee Film Festival
Visions du Reel
OUTshine Film Festival (Spring)
Calgary Underground Film Festival
Hot Docs
San Francisco International Film Festival
Pink Apple Filmfestival
Reel Out Charlotte
NY Premiere: Margaret Mead Film Festival
Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF)
-
Year: 2026
Country: Mexico, US, UK
Length: 75 mins
Director: Efraín Mojica, Rebecca Zweig
Producer: Sarah Strunin
Executive Producer: Carrie Lozano, Lizzie Gillett, Ian Bonhôte
Co-Producer: Carine Chichkowsky, Gerardo Guerra, Juan Pablo Gonzalez
Editor: Analía Goethals
Cinematographer: Josué Eber Morales, Gerardo Guerra
Composer: Emilia Ezeta, Marton Radics
Sound Designer: Maria Rojas
Efraín Mojica
Rebecca Zweig
