Fauna

A longtime collaborator’s ambivalence toward participating in the television show Narcos: Mexico triggered Nicolás Pereda’s newest work, which expands his familiar concerns—the rhythms, conversations, spaces, and silences of his native Mexico—into a rewarding metafictional investigation of storytelling and our relationship to the representation of violence. An aspiring actress lugs her actor-boyfriend, fresh off a narco-trafficking role, home to Mexico, where awkward encounters with family await. The subtle brutality of familial communications soon fades as a more “Narcos-approved” narrative emerges, but whether it is drawn from life, or contemporary storytelling’s vision of “life,” is Fauna’s most pressing question.