Nicolás Pereda

Directing

Nicolás Pereda

Born

1982-01-01 (44)

Place of birth

Mexico City, Mexico

Known for

Directing

Credits

41 titles

Nicolás Pereda was born in Mexico City and holds an MFA in film from York University in Toronto. His films include the features Perpetuum Mobile (2009), Summer of Goliath (2010), Greatest Hits (2012), Killing Strangers (2013), The Absent (2014), Minotaur (2015), and My Skin, Luminous (2019) and Fauna (2020) is his latest film. His work explores the everyday through fractured and elliptical narratives using fiction and documentary tools.

Known for

Everything Else Is Noise poster
NR

Rosa, a contemporary music composer, agrees to give her first television interview at her colleague Tere’s apartment to keep it secret from her husband. What begins as a simple professional conversation turns into an absurd and comic portrait of rivalries and affections among three women—Rosa, Tere, and Tere’s daughter Luisa—interrupted by power outages, a constantly barking dog, and the visit of a famous composer. As the interview unravels, family and artistic tensions surface, revealing, with humor, both the fragility of prestige and the strength of complicity.

Everything Else Is Noise

2026

Venice 70: Future Reloaded poster
5.0

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.

Venice 70: Future Reloaded

2013

Lázaro at Night poster
5.2

Three friends – a trio in love – get together after an audition. Their prosaic exchanges take a different turn when they remember how they met.

Lázaro at Night

2024

Fausto poster
5.3

On the Oaxacan coast of Mexico, rumblings of previous times are never far from the surface. Tales of shapeshifting, telepathy and dealings with the Devil are embedded in the colonization and enslavement of the Americas. Characters from the Faust legend mingle with the inhabitants, while attempting to colonize and control nature through a seemingly never-ending building project. Through literature, myth and local entanglements, the frontier between reality and fiction, and the seen and unseen, no longer apply.

Fausto

2019

The Absent poster
4.4

An old man lives alone in a shabby cabin in a remote mountainous area of Mexico. His house is set to be demolished in order to facilitate the redevelopment of the area. He doesn't know how to protect his house. Time goes by and one day a young man shows up on his doorstep. Looking exhausted, he starts his new routine here, cooking and doing laundry just like the old man.

The Absent

2014

All Things Were Now Overtaken By Silence poster
4.8

Carefully shot in black and white, All Things Were Now Overtaken by Silence is a meditation on the filming of a strange play: a fascinating monologue by actress, director, performance artist and political activist Jesusa Rodriguez of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz’s poem First I Dream.

All Things Were Now Overtaken By Silence

2010

Film credits

Behind the camera

Everything Else Is Noise poster
NR

Rosa, a contemporary music composer, agrees to give her first television interview at her colleague Tere’s apartment to keep it secret from her husband. What begins as a simple professional conversation turns into an absurd and comic portrait of rivalries and affections among three women—Rosa, Tere, and Tere’s daughter Luisa—interrupted by power outages, a constantly barking dog, and the visit of a famous composer. As the interview unravels, family and artistic tensions surface, revealing, with humor, both the fragility of prestige and the strength of complicity.

Everything Else Is Noise

2026

Everything Else Is Noise poster
NR

Rosa, a contemporary music composer, agrees to give her first television interview at her colleague Tere’s apartment to keep it secret from her husband. What begins as a simple professional conversation turns into an absurd and comic portrait of rivalries and affections among three women—Rosa, Tere, and Tere’s daughter Luisa—interrupted by power outages, a constantly barking dog, and the visit of a famous composer. As the interview unravels, family and artistic tensions surface, revealing, with humor, both the fragility of prestige and the strength of complicity.

Everything Else Is Noise

2026

Venice 70: Future Reloaded poster
5.0

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.

Venice 70: Future Reloaded

2013

Lázaro at Night poster
5.2

Three friends – a trio in love – get together after an audition. Their prosaic exchanges take a different turn when they remember how they met.

Lázaro at Night

2024

Lázaro at Night poster
5.2

Three friends – a trio in love – get together after an audition. Their prosaic exchanges take a different turn when they remember how they met.

Lázaro at Night

2024

Fausto poster
5.3

On the Oaxacan coast of Mexico, rumblings of previous times are never far from the surface. Tales of shapeshifting, telepathy and dealings with the Devil are embedded in the colonization and enslavement of the Americas. Characters from the Faust legend mingle with the inhabitants, while attempting to colonize and control nature through a seemingly never-ending building project. Through literature, myth and local entanglements, the frontier between reality and fiction, and the seen and unseen, no longer apply.

Fausto

2019

The Absent poster
4.4

An old man lives alone in a shabby cabin in a remote mountainous area of Mexico. His house is set to be demolished in order to facilitate the redevelopment of the area. He doesn't know how to protect his house. Time goes by and one day a young man shows up on his doorstep. Looking exhausted, he starts his new routine here, cooking and doing laundry just like the old man.

The Absent

2014

All Things Were Now Overtaken By Silence poster
4.8

Carefully shot in black and white, All Things Were Now Overtaken by Silence is a meditation on the filming of a strange play: a fascinating monologue by actress, director, performance artist and political activist Jesusa Rodriguez of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz’s poem First I Dream.

All Things Were Now Overtaken By Silence

2010

Dear Chantal poster
7.3

Pereda returns with a small, mysterious and moving tribute to Chantal Akerman, conceived as a series of joyful impossible letters addressed to the great disappeared from the cinema, to answer her fictional question about renting her bright apartment in Coyoacán.

Dear Chantal

2021

Dear Chantal poster
7.3

Pereda returns with a small, mysterious and moving tribute to Chantal Akerman, conceived as a series of joyful impossible letters addressed to the great disappeared from the cinema, to answer her fictional question about renting her bright apartment in Coyoacán.

Dear Chantal

2021

Dear Chantal poster
7.3

Pereda returns with a small, mysterious and moving tribute to Chantal Akerman, conceived as a series of joyful impossible letters addressed to the great disappeared from the cinema, to answer her fictional question about renting her bright apartment in Coyoacán.

Dear Chantal

2021

Copper poster
NR

On the outskirts of an isolated mining town, Lázaro discovers a dead body. He thinks he has a respiratory illness and doesn’t want to go back to the mine. Rumours, suspicion and desire surround him.

Copper

2025

Copper poster
NR

On the outskirts of an isolated mining town, Lázaro discovers a dead body. He thinks he has a respiratory illness and doesn’t want to go back to the mine. Rumours, suspicion and desire surround him.

Copper

2025

Interview with the Earth poster
6.0

Through a series of interviews and enactments we learn the story of Nico and Amalio, two children who lost a friend while climbing a mountain. Documentary and fiction seamlessly merge creating a hybrid, poetic film.

Interview with the Earth

2008

The Palace poster
5.3

The Palace is a documentary that follows the everyday life of seventeen women who live together, sharing a large house for emotional and financial reasons. They help each other to train for various jobs. Most become nannies, domestic workers and private nurses for elderly patients.

The Palace

2013

The Palace poster
5.3

The Palace is a documentary that follows the everyday life of seventeen women who live together, sharing a large house for emotional and financial reasons. They help each other to train for various jobs. Most become nannies, domestic workers and private nurses for elderly patients.

The Palace

2013

Fauna poster
5.5

Luisa and Gabino visit their parents in a mining town in the north of Mexico. Their father’s only interest in them is sparked by Luisa’s actor boyfriend when he acts out the role of a narco kingpin. To cope with family tensions, Gabino imagines a parallel reality of detectives and organized crime.

Fauna

2021

Fauna poster
5.5

Luisa and Gabino visit their parents in a mining town in the north of Mexico. Their father’s only interest in them is sparked by Luisa’s actor boyfriend when he acts out the role of a narco kingpin. To cope with family tensions, Gabino imagines a parallel reality of detectives and organized crime.

Fauna

2021

Fauna poster
5.5

Luisa and Gabino visit their parents in a mining town in the north of Mexico. Their father’s only interest in them is sparked by Luisa’s actor boyfriend when he acts out the role of a narco kingpin. To cope with family tensions, Gabino imagines a parallel reality of detectives and organized crime.

Fauna

2021

No artwork available
NR

Acclaimed Mexican Canadian filmmaker Nicolás Pereda presents a film/performance/lecture on the life and work of “C.B.,” an artist, political activist, amateur archeologist, and anarchist.

The Private Property Trilogy: A Survey of the Life and Films of C.B.

2018

No artwork available
NR

Acclaimed Mexican Canadian filmmaker Nicolás Pereda presents a film/performance/lecture on the life and work of “C.B.,” an artist, political activist, amateur archeologist, and anarchist.

The Private Property Trilogy: A Survey of the Life and Films of C.B.

2018

Where Are Their Stories? poster
4.8

Vicente (Gabino Rodríguez) is a young farmer in a rural village who scrapes by while taking care of his ill grandmother. Several of Vicente’s uncles intend to their ailing mother’s land without her knowledge. Vicente seeks help from the municipal president who, between shooting hoops on a desolate court, tells him that if he wants justice, he must head to the capital to meet with government officials. Although he hasn’t seen her since he was a child, Vicente sets off in search of his mother, who works as a maid in maze-like Mexico City. With the help of his mother’s employer, a sophisticated middle-aged woman, he finds the government offices where he presents his case. His situation isn’t easily resolved, especially since he does not have the deed to his grandmother’s plot of land, and Vicente finds the complexities of the legal system to be completely overwhelming.

Where Are Their Stories?

2007

Where Are Their Stories? poster
4.8

Vicente (Gabino Rodríguez) is a young farmer in a rural village who scrapes by while taking care of his ill grandmother. Several of Vicente’s uncles intend to their ailing mother’s land without her knowledge. Vicente seeks help from the municipal president who, between shooting hoops on a desolate court, tells him that if he wants justice, he must head to the capital to meet with government officials. Although he hasn’t seen her since he was a child, Vicente sets off in search of his mother, who works as a maid in maze-like Mexico City. With the help of his mother’s employer, a sophisticated middle-aged woman, he finds the government offices where he presents his case. His situation isn’t easily resolved, especially since he does not have the deed to his grandmother’s plot of land, and Vicente finds the complexities of the legal system to be completely overwhelming.

Where Are Their Stories?

2007

Minotaur poster
4.5

Minotaur takes place in a home of books, of readers, of artists. It’s also a home of soft light, of eternal afternoons, of sleepiness, of dreams. The home is impermeable to the world. Mexico is on fire, but the characters of Minotaur sleep soundly.

Minotaur

2015

Minotaur poster
4.5

Minotaur takes place in a home of books, of readers, of artists. It’s also a home of soft light, of eternal afternoons, of sleepiness, of dreams. The home is impermeable to the world. Mexico is on fire, but the characters of Minotaur sleep soundly.

Minotaur

2015

The Empty Classroom poster
NR

Eleven award winning directors explore why nearly one out of every two students in Latin America never graduates high school.

The Empty Classroom

2015

Perpetual Motion poster
2.7

An itinerant mover works from the streets of Mexico City with his partner and lives with his beleaguered mother. A heightened tension within the home – by the absent older brother and unmentioned father. Gabino's casual pursuit of a career is interrupted by a series of intense and almost satirically telenovela-esque domestic vignettes.

Perpetual Motion

2009

Perpetual Motion poster
2.7

An itinerant mover works from the streets of Mexico City with his partner and lives with his beleaguered mother. A heightened tension within the home – by the absent older brother and unmentioned father. Gabino's casual pursuit of a career is interrupted by a series of intense and almost satirically telenovela-esque domestic vignettes.

Perpetual Motion

2009

Tales of Two Who Dreamt poster
4.0

Tales of Two Who Dreamt is set in a housing block in Toronto and pivots on representation and self-representation. Here, a Roma family rehearses the stories of their past for the upcoming hearing on their residency status.

Tales of Two Who Dreamt

2016

Flora poster
6.0

A metacinematic reflection on the nature of representation and the ongoing drug war in Mexico, Nicolás Pereda’s Flora revisits locations and scenes from the mainstream 2010 narco-comedy El Infierno, exploring the paradoxes of depicting narco-trafficking on film—its tendency both to romanticize and to obscure. To screen is both to project and to conceal.

Flora

2022

Flora poster
6.0

A metacinematic reflection on the nature of representation and the ongoing drug war in Mexico, Nicolás Pereda’s Flora revisits locations and scenes from the mainstream 2010 narco-comedy El Infierno, exploring the paradoxes of depicting narco-trafficking on film—its tendency both to romanticize and to obscure. To screen is both to project and to conceal.

Flora

2022

Greatest Hits poster
6.1

When Gabino's father returns home after a long absence, the two men awkwardly attempt to re-establish a relationship; but Gabino and his mother quickly tire of this man who has become a stranger to them and decide to kick him out, before realizing that he has already left. Gabino eventually tracks his father down and spends time with him in his rundown apartment, trying to figure out if there is any possibility for the two of them to ever truly communicate. Though Greatest Hits continues Pereda's exploration of his perennial themes of absence, masculinity and the difficulty of maintaining a family, it opens up a whole new set of aesthetic questions through a bold formal gambit: halfway through, the entire narrative reboots and starts from scratch with another actor playing one of the key characters, leading to different iterations of events already witnessed.

Greatest Hits

2012

Greatest Hits poster
6.1

When Gabino's father returns home after a long absence, the two men awkwardly attempt to re-establish a relationship; but Gabino and his mother quickly tire of this man who has become a stranger to them and decide to kick him out, before realizing that he has already left. Gabino eventually tracks his father down and spends time with him in his rundown apartment, trying to figure out if there is any possibility for the two of them to ever truly communicate. Though Greatest Hits continues Pereda's exploration of his perennial themes of absence, masculinity and the difficulty of maintaining a family, it opens up a whole new set of aesthetic questions through a bold formal gambit: halfway through, the entire narrative reboots and starts from scratch with another actor playing one of the key characters, leading to different iterations of events already witnessed.

Greatest Hits

2012

Killing Strangers poster
5.2

A series of auditions is taking place in a museum-like living room. Various men improvise or deliver prepared lines, rehearse gestures and slogans, aim guns, and collapse as if mortally wounded. The theme of revolution is repeatedly invoked. In between, there are scenes of a desert landscape. Three men seeking to join the Mexican Revolution at the beginning of the last century have lost their way. Conflicts smolder among them, water is running low, and mutual mistrust is beginning to take hold. Placing the reenactment of a possible historical event alongside the preparations for it serves to underline the theatricality of every cinematic account of history. Moreover, on a kind of playful meta-meta-level, the scenes in which the actors feel their way through set pieces from a Beatles song or standard battle slogans allow the viewer to witness the simultaneous construction and deconstruction of a collective myth of revolution.

Killing Strangers

2013

My Skin, Luminous poster
4.6

Enigmatic and deceptively playful in tone, this film from Gabino Rodríguez, in collaboration with Nicolás Pereda, boldly transforms mundane, realist observations at a rural Mexican schoolhouse into fantasy and a sly comment on childhood, rituals, and race.

My Skin, Luminous

2019

My Skin, Luminous poster
4.6

Enigmatic and deceptively playful in tone, this film from Gabino Rodríguez, in collaboration with Nicolás Pereda, boldly transforms mundane, realist observations at a rural Mexican schoolhouse into fantasy and a sly comment on childhood, rituals, and race.

My Skin, Luminous

2019

My Skin, Luminous poster
4.6

Enigmatic and deceptively playful in tone, this film from Gabino Rodríguez, in collaboration with Nicolás Pereda, boldly transforms mundane, realist observations at a rural Mexican schoolhouse into fantasy and a sly comment on childhood, rituals, and race.

My Skin, Luminous

2019

Summer of Goliath poster
5.5

Summer of Goliath is a documentary/fiction hybrid that narrates various stories of the people of the town of Huilotepec in rural Mexico. Teresa's husband has disappeared and she believes he has left her for another woman. Gabino, her son, is a soldier who searches cars at the side of a country road, where very few cars pass by. He hopes one day him and Alberto, his soldier partner, will get machine guns to further intimidate the people driving by. Amalio, Nico, and Oscar are three brothers whose stories we learn through a series of interviews and reenactments. Their father left them many years ago, and their mother can barely support them. Oscar has gained the nickname Goliath after the mysterious death of his girlfriend.

Summer of Goliath

2011

Summer of Goliath poster
5.5

Summer of Goliath is a documentary/fiction hybrid that narrates various stories of the people of the town of Huilotepec in rural Mexico. Teresa's husband has disappeared and she believes he has left her for another woman. Gabino, her son, is a soldier who searches cars at the side of a country road, where very few cars pass by. He hopes one day him and Alberto, his soldier partner, will get machine guns to further intimidate the people driving by. Amalio, Nico, and Oscar are three brothers whose stories we learn through a series of interviews and reenactments. Their father left them many years ago, and their mother can barely support them. Oscar has gained the nickname Goliath after the mysterious death of his girlfriend.

Summer of Goliath

2011

Summer of Goliath poster
5.5

Summer of Goliath is a documentary/fiction hybrid that narrates various stories of the people of the town of Huilotepec in rural Mexico. Teresa's husband has disappeared and she believes he has left her for another woman. Gabino, her son, is a soldier who searches cars at the side of a country road, where very few cars pass by. He hopes one day him and Alberto, his soldier partner, will get machine guns to further intimidate the people driving by. Amalio, Nico, and Oscar are three brothers whose stories we learn through a series of interviews and reenactments. Their father left them many years ago, and their mother can barely support them. Oscar has gained the nickname Goliath after the mysterious death of his girlfriend.

Summer of Goliath

2011