Flies

DramaComedy

Already released · Theatrical Jul 1, 2026 (MX)

★ Shortlisted by Mitch Allen

Programme: Centrepiece
Year: 2026
Runtime: 101 min
Country: Mexico
Language: Spanish
Premiere: North American Premiere
TMDB rating: 7.3 (2 votes)
In cinemas: Jul 1, 2026 (MX)

Olga lives a strictly regulated life without attachments in a vast apartment block. When out of financial necessity she rents a room in her apartment to a man who also sneaks-in his nine-year-old son, an unlikely bond forms. Her carefully controlled world begins to shift, and their lives become intertwined against her will.

From the TIFF programme

When a lonely woman rents a room to a father with a hospitalized relative, she forms an unexpected bond with his young son, in Fernando Eimbcke’s tender story about care, connection, and quiet transformation.

Olga (Mexican contemporary indie cinema mainstay Teresita Sánchez) is a mature, single woman who leads a mostly unhurried — but rather lonely — life in a middle-class apartment complex across from a big, busy hospital. To support herself she decides to rent out a room in her apartment to a father (Hugo Ramírez) who has a relative at the hospital. Unexpectedly, she forms an unlikely bond with his nine-year-old son, Cristian (Bastian Escobar), whose quiet resilience gradually disrupts her routines and opens the door to a profound emotional transformation she didn’t anticipate.

Fernando Eimbcke returns to the Festival following Duck Season (TIFF ’04), Club Sandwich (TIFF ’13), and his 2025 opus Olmo, this time exploring how apathy can give way to connection, and even lead to action for the sake of the well-being of others. Presenting Olga’s predictable, measured world in stark black and white while maintaining a natural rhythm and understated mise en scène, the film tenderly unfolds to reveal uncomplicated, yet deeply resonant characters and situations.

With remarkable sensitivity, Eimbcke finds moments of humour, grace, and quiet revelation in the everyday, creating an intimate portrait of chosen family, empathy, and the unexpected ways in which caring for another person can restore one's own sense of purpose. Suddenly confronted with her own pain through the mirror of strangers, Olga takes the leap to nurture a child at the moment he needs it most.

DIANA CADAVID

Content advisory: coarse language, mature themes