Nicolás Pereda

Directing

Nicolás Pereda

Born January 1, 1982 · Mexico City, Mexico (age 44)

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 narrati…

Known For

Killing StrangersKilling Strangers · 2013
Killing Strangers
5.22013
MovieDrama
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.
Venice 70: Future ReloadedVenice 70: Future Reloaded · 2013
Venice 70: Future Reloaded
5.02013
MovieDramaDocumentary
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.
Everything Else Is Noise
Dec 25, 2026
Everything Else Is Noise · 2026
Everything Else Is Noise
2026
MovieComedyMusic
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.
FaustoFausto · 2019
Fausto
5.32019
MovieFantasyHorror
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.
The AbsentThe Absent · 2014
The Absent
4.42014
Movie
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.
CopperCopper · 2025
Copper
2025
MovieDrama
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.
Interview with the EarthInterview with the Earth · 2008
Interview with the Earth
6.02008
Movie
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.
Dear ChantalDear Chantal · 2021
Dear Chantal
7.32021
MovieDocumentary
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.

Filmography

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Killing StrangersKilling Strangers · 2013
Killing Strangers
5.22013
MovieDrama
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.

Director

Where Are Their Stories?Where Are Their Stories? · 2007
Where Are Their Stories?
4.82007
Movie
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.

Director

Summer of GoliathSummer of Goliath · 2011
Summer of Goliath
5.52011
Movie
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.

Director

Greatest HitsGreatest Hits · 2012
Greatest Hits
6.12012
MovieComedyDrama
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.

Editor