Writers: Vanesa Garnica and Fernando Eimbcke
Director: Fernando Eimbcke
This tender film, shot in gorgeous black-and-white, examines the relationship between a bubbly nine-year-old boy and an older, grumpy woman in 1990s Mexico. Young actor Bastian Escobar may just be the find of this year’s BFI London Film Festival. As the cantankerous Olga eventually discovers, it’s impossible not to fall under the spell of Escobar’s joyous Cristian.
Fernando Eimbcke’s film begins with Olga and a fly that has entered her apartment. It buzzes loudly, but it escapes her every swat. She opens the window to encourage it to wing its way out. She settles back down to play sudoku on her desktop, thinking the fly has escaped. However, its irritating whirr persists. There’s only one thing for it: the fly killer spray. And boy, does she spray the fly to death.
Olga is lonely and bitter. She does little all day; plays her games on the computer, watches TV, and, when she goes to her local café, complains that the food isn’t worth the price. She’s in pain too, struggling up the stairs to her flat, which overlooks the local hospital. When she’s told that she needs an operation to relieve the agony of an ingrown toenail, she baulks at the fee for such surgery. She hasn’t got the money, and so she decides to rent out her spare room.
Outside the hospital, Cristian and his father are looking for somewhere to stay. They are from the countryside but are in the Mexican city because Cristian’s mother is in hospital. Cristian’s delightfully patient father (a strong performance by Enrique Arreola) calls the number he can see on the advert hanging out of Olga’s window. When he arrives at her flat sans Cristian, Olga snaps that he can’t use the kitchen. He can use the bathroom, but he shouldn’t spend too much time in there. Olga invites no further conversation.
When Olga turns off her bedroom light, the father squirrels Cristian into the rented room and squirrels him out before Olga awakens the next morning. Minors aren’t allowed in the hospital, so Cristian spends some of the day alone, talking to the tattooed hawker selling toys on the street or, if he has any coins, playing the arcade game Cosmic Invaders.
Inevitably, Olga discovers that she has an extra, non-paying lodger and angrily informs father and son that they must leave by the end of the week. The father now must fork out more cash, cash that he really should be spending on his wife’s treatment. He leaves Cristian for a few days in the flat while he goes off to work outside of the city.
Eimbcke confesses that while filming, he had to rip up the script when Escobar had problems memorising the dialogue, and so many of the scenes featuring him are improvised, affording the film some extra realism. Often, Eimbcke shoots at Escobar’s level, in order that we view the world as he sees it. We see uniformed torsos of security guards and the hands of a receptionist who gives out passes to hospital visitors. Cristian is curious and playful, but a demon when it comes to Cosmic Invaders.
Teresita Sánchez is very good at portraying Olga’s contempt for the world, brought on because the world has hurt her. The locked wardrobe in Cristian’s room is full of children’s clothes, signifying a loss that can’t be talked about. However, Sánchez is less convincing when she becomes friends with Cristian, whom she had previously treated as a nuisance to be tolerated, like that buzzing fly in the film’s opening minutes. Olga’s transformation is too sudden, and this rather undercuts the rest of the movie’s gentle pacing. Eimcke spends so much time setting the scene that the moving connection between Olga and Cristian is rushed when it could be at the story’s heart.
Flies is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2026 from 7-18 October.
