Small gestures can have a big impact – that could be the conclusion that subliminally crystallized at the end of Fernando Eimbcke's “Flies”. In his fifth feature film, the Mexican director uses laconic humor to describe how a little boy helps an aloof woman break away from her self-imposed isolation. The result is a film of quiet tones and casual observations, which is told in a decidedly slow and elliptical manner and impresses with beautiful, strictly composed black and white images.
In Mexico City, 50-year-old Olga (Teresita Sánchez) lives in an anonymous apartment complex directly opposite a hospital. She avoids contact with the outside world whenever possible. She spends most of her days alone, solving Sudoku problems on a computer that appears to be from the last millennium. She doesn't have a lot of money, which is why, despite her reservations, she responds to an advertisement to rent out a small room in her apartment that has apparently not been used for a long time.
The lonely Olga (Teresita Sánchez) unexpectedly has to look after little Cristian (Bastian Escobar). Can he soften her heart?
A man (Hugo Ramírez) quickly comes forward, whose wife is in the hospital. He also has financial problems and therefore hides from Olga the fact that he has a nine-year-old son named Cristian (Bastian Escobar), whom he smuggles into the room at night. The secrecy doesn't go well for long: Cristian is discovered, but is then allowed to stay – and becomes a catalyst for Olga to question her self-imposed isolation.
Even before you see the first image of “Flies,” you hear the monotonous, nerve-wracking buzz of a fly. She sits on Olga, who tries to free herself from the annoying insect with a towel and soon also a spray. Eimbcke plays this scene in such detail that one inevitably sees it as an allegory. Just for what? Is Cristian, who is also an unwanted visitor in Olga's apartment, some kind of fly? He's not annoying enough, but he's too important to the story.
In the footsteps of Wim Wenders
A crooked picture that inadvertently fits in quite well with a film that prefers to suggest rather than be specific, but sometimes gets lost in its metaphors. Fernando Eimbcke cites the two classics “Gloria, the Gangster Bride” by John Cassavetes and “Alice in the Cities” by Wim Wenders as role models – two films in which an adult is suddenly responsible for a child who changes the adult's world through his innocence.
Eimbcke has now also placed a professional actor next to an amateur: in his case, Teresita Sánchez, who is very well known in Mexico, and Bastian Escobar, who is actually only nine years old. The boy seems to have thrown the entire filming schedule overboard with his presence, as Eimbcke reports. He found it difficult to recite written dialogues, but his curiosity was great – especially since Escobar himself comes from the rural state of Oaxaca and, like his character, he first had to discover the metropolis.
Cristian also softens our hearts
The greatest quality of “Flies” lies in the small encounters between people. Eimbcke stages casual situations between a child who has not yet been affected by the harshness of the metropolis and the people who have been making their way in the urban jungle for a long time – be they shop owners, hospital visitors or laundry employees. It's always about money or the lack of it: everything has to be paid for in cash, every peso is turned around – a harsh reality.
But Cristian always manages to create a disarming closeness: he exchanges sweets from a toy seller for stickers with which he henceforth marks his world – but also the walking frame of an old man, who in turn returns the favor with a small ball. Olga can't resist Cristian's charms for long. After the father disappears for a few days, it is inevitably up to her to help the boy visit his mother in the hospital. When the time finally comes, Eimbcke manages to create touching, succinct moments that inevitably soften even the solitary Olga.
Conclusion: With “Flies”, Fernando Eimbcke has made a stylistically striking film that gets going late and then benefits from the talent of its nine-year-old leading actor.
We saw “Flies” at the Berlinale 2026, where the film celebrated its world premiere in the official competition.