FLIES (MOSCAS)

(director/writer: Fernando Eimbcke; screenwriter: Vanesa Garnica; cinematographer: María Secco; editors: Salvador Reyes Zúñiga, Fernando Eimbcke; music: Camalio Lara; cast: Teresita Sánchez (Olga), Bastian Escobar (Cristian), Hugo Ramírez (Tulio, father of Cristian), Enrique Arreola (Isaac); Runtime: 101; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Eréndira Núñez Larios, Michel Franco, Fernando Eimbcke; Teorema; 2026-B/W Mexico/in Spanish with English subtitles)

“Reminds us we all need some love.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

The Mexican filmmaker Fernando Eimbcke (“Club Sandwich”/”Olmo”) is the director of this arthouse comedy drama on lonliness, that he co-writes with Vanesa Garnica. It’s shot in black-and-white.

The middle-aged Olga (Teresita Sánchez) is an unfeeling lonely woman who lives alone, without friends or relatives, in an apartment complex across from a large hospital in a bustling Mexico City. Out of financial need she rents an apartment in her duplex to the polite gentleman Tulio (Hugo Ramírez), who secretly brings along his nine-year-old son Cristan (Bastian Escobar). The boy’s mom is in the hospital across the street and the father takes the room because he must work outside the city and children are not allowed to stay in the hospital. Dad wants Cristian safe and close by when he visits his cancer patient wife, and accepts all the terms of the landlady, including no kitchen privileges.

There are flies always buzzing around the apartment complex that greatly annoy Olga, and also constant noises from her neighbors and the traffic.

There are few words spoken in the simple bittersweet story how the boy just acts naturally like a little boy and she soon warms up to him, even as he brings home a Space Invaders video game from the nearby arcade. One day we see her smile for the first time when she dances the cha cha with him.

In its quiet way, the keenly observant and well-acted film reminds us we all need some love.


It played at the Berlin Film Festival.

REVIEWED ON 4/12/2026  GRADE: B
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