Pereda and Rodríguez were commissioned by the Ministry of Education to document primary schools across Mexico, with Thomas More school in Michoacán their first stop. Yet the routine of lunchtimes, lessons and playground games also proves a perfect setting for daydreams and fantasy: an indigenous child with a peculiar skin condition, colonial-era miracles, contamination, imprisonment, disfigurement, circularity. If this is a documentary, it’s one of dreams, of what goes through the children’s heads as they nap in the classroom in the heat of the afternoon, before the storm breaks. (JL)
-Locarno Film Festival - 2019
-New York Film Festival - 2019-Toronto International Film Festival - 2019
Nicolás Pereda has made 9 features and 4 shorts. He often collaborates with the theater collective Lagartijas tiradas al sol and actress Teresa Sánchez. His work has been the subject of over 30 retrospectives worldwide and has been presented in most major international film festivals including Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno, and Toronto.
Gabino Rodriguez has acted in more than 30 full-length films with directors such as Nicolás Pereda, Raya Martin, Paul Leduc and Cary Fukunaga, among others. In 2003, together with Luisa Pardo, he founded the Lagartijas tiradas al sol collective, with which he produced 11 stage projects. They have participated in Vienna's Festwochen, the Autumn Festival in Paris, the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, Escena Contemporánea in Madrid, Montreal's Transameriques, Zurich's Theater Spektakell and many more.