‘Moscas’ Review: To Be a Fly on the Wall is to See All in Fernando Eimbcke’s Quiet Family Drama [B-] Berlinale

It begins with the buzzing of a fly. That thin, nerve-fraying sound that slices through the silence and refuses to disappear. Flies are tiny invaders, underestimated until they take over the entire room. You wave your hands, you swat, you lose patience, and still they return, stubborn and unrelenting. In Moscas, that buzzing functions as a programmatic opening. It is not merely a sound, but a stance. An announcement that even the smallest disturbance can unsettle a carefully calibrated order.

Olga (Teresita Sánchez) lives alone in an apartment with a direct view of a massive hospital. Her life is a web of rituals that look less like comfort than control. She sits at a clunky computer solving Sudoku puzzles with an almost ascetic concentration. She walks to the same diner, orders her food by rote, and returns to an apartment that appears tidy yet strangely hollow. Director Fernando Eimbcke observes these routines in rigorously composed black and white images. The light is harsh, the contrasts clear, and yet everything remains suspended in shades of gray. This Mexico feels untethered from time. Not entirely present, not quite past, but existing in an in-between state where institutions dominate and individuality can only express itself in small gestures.

When financial strain forces Olga to rent out a room, her fragile routine is called into question. The new tenant, a quiet and polite man (Hugo Ramírez), accepts her rules without protest. No access to the kitchen. No unnecessary conversation. Money changes hands discreetly. What he fails to mention is his son, Christian (Bastian Escobar), who at first remains hidden. Christian’s mother is being treated for cancer in the hospital across the street. The illness hangs over the film like a shadow, palpable but rarely addressed directly.

When the father has to leave the city for work, Christian stays behind. A nine-year-old boy in a strange apartment, facing a hospital that denies him access to his own mother. From this moment on, the film’s perspective subtly shifts. Eimbcke is not interested in grand melodramatic gestures, but in what exists between them. In Christian’s wanderings through corridors. In his waiting at reception desks. In his attempts to ask for room numbers, only to discover that bed 603 is no longer the right one.

A recurring motif is that of slippers. Olga uses her house shoes to swat flies, almost mechanically, as if determined to eliminate every disturbance at once. Christian, on the other hand, finds his mother’s slippers and wants to bring them to her at the hospital. From a seemingly minor detail emerges a quiet symbol. For Olga, intruders are something to be eradicated. For Christian, objects become bridges to closeness. This juxtaposition is among the film’s most subtle and affecting ideas.

Child actor Bastian Escobar plays Christian with remarkable naturalness. His curiosity, his focus on seemingly trivial details, and his enthusiasm for the video game “Cosmic Defenders Pro” lend the film a delicate energy. The electronic sounds of the game, a modern variation on “Space Invaders”, ripple through the sound design like a second buzzing. In the game, Christian can shoot down invaders, conquer levels and gain control. In real life, he remains dependent on adult decisions, hospital personnel, and economic constraints. This contrast between digital mastery and real-world helplessness gives Moscas its melancholic depth. Actress Teresita Sánchezon gives Olga a complexity that extends beyond her initial abrasiveness. Beneath her strictness lies not cruelty, but fatigue. A loneliness that has settled over the years. Eimbcke stages her gradual softening toward Christian not as a sudden redemption, but as a hesitant thaw. A glance that lingers a moment longer. A rule not enforced quite as rigidly. This restraint protects the film from sentimental excess.

In the realm of the Berlinale competition, Moscas feels strikingly controlled. Eimbcke clearly draws from neorealist traditions, yet he adopts primarily their observational impulse rather than their radical edge. Social inequalities, precarious living conditions and medical injustice remain in the background. They provide context but rarely become the subject of explicit confrontation. This choice makes the film accessible and lucid, but also somewhat safe. Here lies its central ambivalence. Moscas is precise, sensitive, superbly acted and aesthetically cohesive. The black and white cinematography underscores a world in which moral categories are not sharply divided. Everything exists in gradations, in gray areas. Yet where one might wish for formal or emotional escalation, Eimbcke remains suggestive rather than daring. The finale is quiet and almost understated. No sweeping catharsis, no grand pathos, but a movement that fades rather than concludes.

Perhaps that is the point. Perhaps it is precisely this refusal to raise its voice that distinguishes Moscas from calculated tearjerkers. And yet one cannot shake the feeling that the buzzing of the fly never quite becomes a true threat. That the disturbance always stays within bounds and the plot moves  without being devastating. It is a finely crafted drama about loneliness, childhood perception and the small invasions of everyday life. A film that works with quiet precision, but never quite finds the courage to let its own unrest fully erupt.

Grade: B-

This review is from the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival, where Moscas had its world premiere in the Competition section.