Flies

A closed-off curmudgeon connects with a young boy left in her care in this bittersweet charmer that won two Berlinale prizes.

Finally admitting she’s in financial dire straits, elderly sourpuss Olga rents out the spare room in her Mexico City apartment. Heeding her ad are Tulio and his nine-year-old son Cristian, who need lodgings as the mum of the family receives cancer treatment at the nearby hospital. At first, Olga begrudges them, hesitant to have a child in her living quarters. But as Tulio ventures out to look for work, she finds herself traversing the city alone with Cristian, whose wide-eyed optimism begins to melt her frosty exterior. Receiving the Competition Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and the Berliner Morgenpost Readers’ Jury Award at the Berlinale, Fernando Eimbcke’s fifth feature is a disarmingly winsome portrait of two people who come together despite – or perhaps because of – tragic circumstances. Shot in evocative black-and-white, Flies gender-flips the dynamic of films such as Alice in the Cities (MIFF 1975) and Paper Moon in its tale of an unwilling adult thrown together by fate with a child who is not their own, while the film’s humour is droll without dismissing the weightier themes at play: mortality, imminent grief, and the irreversibility of both time and loss of innocence. Anchored on powerhouse performances from Teresita Sánchez (Tótem, MIFF 2023) and first-timer Bastian Escobar, Flies _portrays the alchemy between the resignation of old age and the curiosity of youth that, in combination, paves the way for healing. “A sharply observed portrait of family and connection, wherein the comedy can suddenly sigh with a bittersweet sense of loss … humbly poignant.” – _Sight and Sound

Content: Melbourne International Film Festival