Olga lives by routine. Alone in a vast Mexico City apartment complex, she has built a carefully controlled world, until financial necessity leads her to rent a room to Tulio. But the “solo” tenant secretly brings along his nine-year-old son, Christian. What begins as an intrusion slowly becomes an unexpected bond that opens Olga to a world she has kept at a distance. With Flies (Moscas), Fernando Eimbcke (Duck Season, Olmo) finds extraordinary poetry in the everyday, letting a child's curiosity and openness transform a life. Funny and deeply tender, the film moves effortlessly between humor and melancholy without ever forcing an emotion. Shot in luminous black and white, the apartment blocks, streets, and ordinary spaces take on an almost neorealist beauty, recalling the humanism of Bicycle Thieves while remaining unmistakably Eimbcke's own. Teresita Sánchez gives a wonderfully restrained performance, finding humor and vulnerability in a woman learning, perhaps for the first time, how to let someone into her life. Winner of two Berlinale awards, Flies is a quiet delight that sneaks up on you. —João Federici