Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig present their richly cinematic new project Jaripeo at DocsBarcelona Rough Cut pitch May 15. The highly anticipated work, which has already received backing from the likes of ITVS (US), Arte (France), Sundance (US) and Chicken & Egg (US), visits the rural jaripeos (rodeos) in Michoacán, Mexico, where a hypermasculine tradition is rife with hidden queer encounters. In the film, we follow two rancheros as they navigate desire, machismo and mass migration during the Christmas jaripeo season.
“In my hometown, the biggest jaripeos happen on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, a season where thousands of people return from the United States to visit their families,” Mojica explained when pitching recently at VdR-Industry.
“My siblings and I also used to move back and forth from California and Mexico when we were kids. And, of course, the main spectacle of returning home was the jaripeo, a constant reminder of what a real man is like. The thing was, as a twinkly little kid, I didn’t really fit into this macho of fantasy. As a teenager though, I mean, who doesn’t like to see hot cowboys?”
Co-director Zweig added: “When Efraín invited me to the jaripeo for the first time nearly a decade ago, I was struck by how contemporary questions of manhood and desire and community seem to play out in this antiquated spectacle of a man dominating a bull. That’s when our friendship began to evolve into an artistic collaboration.”
“Efraín’s work as a conceptual artist ranges from surreal visuals to light and sound installations. My poetic practice is driven by syntactic and sonic experimentation, while my previous work as a journalist often centred on rural stories of resistance,” she continued. “We didn’t go in search of a subject for a documentary. Instead, the story brought us to the medium. We came together to create a film that wanted to challenge traditional narratives of masculinity and rural life.”
One of the producers on the project, which is in post-production with an expected release date of January 2026, is US-based Sarah Strunin of Jaripeo Documentary LLC
“Queer rural Life in Michoacán, is largely undocumented, and Efraín and Rebecca explore the complexities of queer identity in this unique region with a nuance that I think is rarely seen on screen.,” she commented. “Jaripeo finished principal production on New Year’s Day 2025 and we are now firmly in post-production and on track to finish in the late summer early fall of this year. And of course, as always, we are looking for finishing funds to meet this deadline.”
‘We already have a co-production with ITVS in the US that will distribute Jaripeo on televisions across the United States, and we also have a similar presale here with Arte through our wonderful French co-producer. We are hoping to speak to other international broadcasters, distributors, and financiers who want to share in our vision, as well as festival programmers and sales partners who can bring this transgressive documentary vision to audiences around the world.”
Efraín Mojica sums up the project’s appeal. “The film utilizes verité, Super-8 and abstracted sequences to walk the line between the real and the subconscious. It’s an experimental portrait of queer stories that converge at the jaripeo grounds, a place where we play and flirt in the shadow of machismo.”
