Copper

In Pereda’s Kafkaesque thriller of bureaucracy, Lázaro – played by Lázaro Gabino Rodríguez, one of Pereda’s regular repertory of actors from the Mexican theatre collective Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol – becomes increasingly mired by respiratory issues after he finds a corpse on the side of the road, on his way to work at the mines. Rather than build a central narrative around the murder mystery, however, Pereda moves off-centre to explore how systemic violence seeps into the inner lives of those on the periphery as Lázaro is consistently met with scepticism and contempt from his doctors, his boss and even his doting mother and aunt.

Couched in a world of near-total insularity, Lázaro and his family attempt to remain oblivious to the broader forces of violence shaping their rural mining town. Yet transgressive desires and an oppressive atmosphere, rendered in a palette of bright greens and ochre tones, steadily percolate through the film, as Nicolás Pereda, with characteristic dexterity, attends to the smallest gestures and movements to create a work that examines workplace exploitation, violence at both intimate and structural scales, truth, and the necessity of performance.

Copper, dir. Nicólas Pereda, Mexico/Canada 2025, Spanish with English subtitles, 79 min.