Metrograph

“Prolific Mexican Canadian filmmaker Nicolás Pereda has an incredible talent for upending expectations. Through fractured narratives, his films weave together both the real and imagined. Working with a stable of regular collaborators, which includes Luisa Pardo and Lázaro Gabino Rodríguez (founding members of the Mexican theatre collective Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol), Pereda often draws biographical elements from his cast—their apartments, their clothing, their physicality, and even their lived lives—allowing his characters to become the actors themselves. Continuing with this deeply nuanced approach to filmmaking, Pereda’s 10th feature, Lázaro at Night (screening here in its New York theatrical premiere), explores the everyday lives of three once-young, aspiring writers and actors, as they simultaneously audition for a role in a small movie. As their aspirations evolve, so do the film’s formal devices—using sound as a way to expand the world outside the frame, or, in an even more radical shift, taking us from the everyday to the fantastical. In turn, as we dislodge from what we think we know the film to be, this repositioning reveals something to us about the roles we play; not just in cinema, but in our actual lives.” —Jason Evans, This Long Century

Q&A with filmmaker Nicolás Pereda moderated by This Long Century founder Jason Evans on Friday, September 5th