Jaripeo

A journey to Michoacán’s hypermasculine rodeos descends into the subconscious of memory, queer desire, and longing, leading to a reckoning with the wounds and beauty of a home left behind. Efrain Mojica and Rebecca Zweig’s lyrical, inventive documentary captures a portrait of life as a young queer ranchero in Penjamillo.

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.