Review: ‘Jaripeo’ puts queer Mexican rodeo culture under the strobe light
2026 / Dir. Rebecca Zweig, Efraín Mojica
Rating: 3/5
Watch if you like: Chloé Zhao’s The Rider but wish it were drenched in bisexual neon lighting and strobe lights.
Co-director Mojica returns to their rural western Mexico homeland to explore the complex queerness of jaripeo rodeo culture, where homosexuality carefully dances with hypermasculinity. Jaripeo is a slightly experimental documentary mixing interviews between Mojica and a handful of local queer men, lush shots of the countryside, slow-motion bull riding, grainy Super 8 handheld shots, and abstract strobe-light sequences that seem to reflect the inner passions of men who exist in a world where it’s largely accepted to have same-sex desires as long as it’s left unspoken and in the shadows.
Jaripeo certainly looks breathtaking, but the limited interview segments are what really take hold. We have the macho cowboy, Noé, who is only attracted to other macho men and came out to his parents years ago, but was never spoken about again. Elsewhere, Joseph presents as more openly feminine, with an exquisite manicure, in a small, rural town while serving as an active church leader. These are fascinating characters, including Mojica, who left home to become a visual artist and debates coming out to their parents, yet we only get a small snapshot of them before moving back to slow-motion bull riding or a stunning nighttime strobelight sequence in the cornfields.
While visually stunning and well worth watching for an introduction to a queer subculture likely unknown to those outside of it, Jaripeo only scratches the surface and leaves the stories of these men only partially told.