Flies (2026) Review: Loneliness, Interrupted

Is Flies worth watching?

Yes. Flies is a small, humane and quietly funny drama in which Fernando Eimbcke finds real emotional depth in a very simple situation, and its two lead performances are a pleasure to watch. The film trusts silence, framing and awkward pauses to do the work that other dramas hand to dialogue, and it avoids sentimentality almost entirely. The reservation is its premise: a closed-off adult softened by a child is a well-worn story, and the film does not always escape that shape.

What is Flies about?

Flies is set in Mexico City and centres on Olga (Teresita Sánchez), a solitary middle-aged woman whose life has narrowed to routine. She needs money for an operation she has coming up, so she rents out a spare room to a man whose wife is in hospital across the street.

The arrangement is meant to be practical and nothing more. Then the tenant has to leave town, and he quietly leaves his nine-year-old son (Bastian Escobar) behind in her care. The boy’s presence, curious, needy and impossible to ignore, starts to pry open a life that Olga has deliberately sealed against grief.

Fernando Eimbcke directs this Spanish-language drama with comic touches, which runs 99 minutes and was shot in black and white. It screened at the Berlinale in 2026 before its release in July, and Hugo Ramírez and Enrique Arreola round out the small cast.

Eimbcke’s return to small rooms

Eimbcke made his name with Duck Season, a black-and-white comedy about bored teenagers stuck in a Mexico City apartment, and Flies feels like a return to that intimate register. The monochrome photography strips the city to shapes and textures, which suits a story about a woman who has drained her own life of colour. The world of the film stays deliberately small, an apartment and a hospital across the street, and Eimbcke uses that confinement to make every shift in the household feel significant.

His comedy remains dry. Much of the film’s wit comes from the small frictions of an arrangement neither character asked for, where neither quite knows how to behave with the other. Those scenes are funny without ever becoming cute, and they build trust between the characters one gesture at a time.

Two performances built on restraint

Teresita Sánchez gives Olga a guardedness that is never cold. She plays a woman who has made emotional distance into a habit, and the tiny changes in her posture and patience across the film carry more weight than any speech could. The film only gradually reveals what she is protecting herself from, and Sánchez makes that history felt long before it is explained.

Bastian Escobar is a real find. He plays the boy without the precocious sparkle that sinks so many child performances: he is stubborn, bored, frightened and occasionally infuriating, which makes him believable. The chemistry between the two leads is prickly rather than sweet, and that friction is what keeps the film honest.

Where the familiar shape shows

For all its tact, Flies is working with a template. Audiences will recognise the reluctant guardian, the child who breaks through her defences and the gradual thaw, and the film’s structure offers few surprises. The slow pace and minimal plot will frustrate viewers who need narrative momentum, and a couple of late emotional beats feel more expected than earned. It is a film of fine details rather than bold choices.

Who should watch Flies?

It suits admirers of quiet, observational world cinema, anyone who enjoys stories about unlikely families, and viewers who liked Eimbcke’s earlier work. At 99 minutes it is compact, though its pace asks for attention. The content is gentle, with themes of grief, illness and loneliness rather than anything graphic, so it is suitable for most older children and adults.

If Flies speaks to you, try:

• Roma, Alfonso Cuarón’s black-and-white Mexico City memory piece, which shares its attention to domestic space.
• Instructions Not Included, a much broader Mexican crowd-pleaser about an adult unexpectedly left responsible for a child.

The verdict

Flies is a modest film with a big emotional payoff, built on careful direction and two beautifully calibrated performances. Its premise is familiar and its pace is slow, but Eimbcke’s restraint and eye for small comic truths make it one of the more affecting Mexican dramas of the year.