Everything Else is Noise

ComedyMusic

In cinemas 3mo later · Theatrical Dec 25, 2026 (AT)

★ Shortlisted by Mitch Allen

Programme: Wavelengths
Year: 2026
Runtime: 71 min
Country: Germany, Canada, Mexico
Language: Spanish
Premiere: North American Premiere
In cinemas: Dec 25, 2026 (AT)

Rosa, a contemporary music composer, agrees to give her first television interview at her colleague Tere’s apartment to keep it secret from her husband. What begins as a simple professional conversation turns into an absurd and comic portrait of rivalries and affections among three women—Rosa, Tere, and Tere’s daughter Luisa—interrupted by power outages, a constantly barking dog, and the visit of a famous composer. As the interview unravels, family and artistic tensions surface, revealing, with humor, both the fragility of prestige and the strength of complicity.

From the TIFF programme

Prolific Mexican-Canadian auteur Nicolás Pereda has delivered his sharpest and most amusing film yet with Everything Else is Noise, a sly, self-reflexive comedy of manners and mishaps involving a trio of women classical composers and musicians.

At once a capstone to and departure from his recent string of exceptional work — including Fauna (TIFF ’20), Lázaro de noche (TIFF ’24), and Copper (TIFF ’25) — prolific Mexican-Canadian auteur Nicolás Pereda delivers his sharpest and most amusing film yet with Everything Else is Noise, a sly, self-reflexive comedy of manners and mishaps interrogating the polyvalent nature of noise, both literal and metaphorical, by way of its presumed antithesis: music.

Working again with his preternaturally talented troupe of actors, the filmmaker employs a chamber piece structure (pun intended?), grounded in a trio of women classical composers and musicians. For her interview with a local Mexico City television channel, Rosa (Rosa Estela Juárez Vargas) has asked to use the cozy, plant-filled apartment of her friend Teresa (Teresita Sánchez) as backdrop.

However, upon the arrival of journalist Lázaro (Lázaro G. Rodríguez) and cameraman Paco (Francisco Barreiro), the production is quickly derailed by the banality of the crew's questions and an escalating series of everyday annoyances, including a cacophony of gridlocked traffic and an interminable barking dog that pervades the otherwise tranquil space. Teresa’s aimless daughter Luisa (Luisa Pardo) is also lurking about, complicating the interlocutors’ lines of enquiry with as much relish as exasperation.

Shot with Pereda’s typically light, practically Lubitschian touch, and an inspiring economy of form, Everything Else is Noise incisively skewers gender biases in the creative fields while exploring the blurred line between reality and performance, as well as the refusal to conform to expectations — be it as a mother, a daughter, or an artist.

ANDRÉA PICARD