“Moscas”, interview with director Fernando Eimbcke

With “Moscas”, Mexican filmmaker Fernando Eimbcke returns to the Berlinale but this time in Competition, with a project whose origins stretch back decades.

“I found this file on my computer from 25 years ago,” Eimbcke recalls. What began as an abandoned draft gradually resurfaced as a viable story, but only once he began working with novelist-turned-screenwriter Vanesa Garnica. Their collaboration, which previously brought Olmo to Panorama, became the decisive factor in finally realising Moscas.

“I needed to work with her,” Eimbcke explains. “She’s very generous. She taught me a lot during the writing process.” With a strong premise in place, a solitary woman forced to rent out a room, only to see her rigid world destabilised by the arrival of a father and his nine-year-old son, the duo felt confident enough to dig deeper into character psychology rather than plot mechanics. “We knew where the story would end,” he says. “So we could go deeper and deeper.”

From Dialogue to Action

The script evolved during production. Initially, the screenplay contained extensive dialogue for the child character, including a lengthy monologue in a hospital scene in which the boy recounts events to his mother.

But reality intervened. “It was not that the actor couldn’t learn the lines,” Eimbcke clarifies. “He just didn’t care about the dialogue.” Rather than forcing performance into words, the director chose to rethink the scene entirely.

He called Garnica. The solution was radical in its simplicity: erase the monologue. Replace speech with action.

In the revised version, the boy sees his mother, puts on his shoes, and quietly asks if they can leave—the emotional weight shifts from explanation to gesture. The scene becomes less about information and more about presence.

For Eimbcke, this transformation reflects a broader artistic principle: cinema as action rather than articulation. Meaning emerges not from what characters declare, but from what they do — or cannot do.

Olga’s Controlled Universe

At the centre of “Moscas” is Olga, a woman living a meticulously regulated life in a vast, impersonal apartment block. She has no friends, no visible attachments, no disruptions. Financial necessity forces her to rent a room. The tenant arrives and brings his son in secret.

The intrusion is gradual, almost imperceptible. Against her will, Olga begins to form a bond with the child. What destabilises her is not dramatic confrontation but proximity. The presence of another life in her controlled environment exposes the fragility she had kept contained.

Eimbcke approaches this transformation without melodrama. As in his earlier films, stillness and silence carry narrative weight. The apartment becomes both fortress and prison, a space where routine substitutes for connection.

Collaboration as Letting Go

Throughout the interview, Eimbcke returns to the idea of collaboration as a process of surrender. Working with Garnica required openness, not only to structural changes but to vulnerability in storytelling. The rewriting of the hospital scene became emblematic of that trust.

The decision to privilege action over speech mirrors Olga’s journey. Just as the script sheds explanatory dialogue, the character sheds emotional defences. Change does not arrive through confession but through shared space and small gestures.

In a Competition lineup often marked by overt political narratives, “Moscas” offers something quieter: an examination of solitude interrupted. The film suggests that transformation rarely announces itself loudly. Sometimes it enters the room uninvited, like a fly.

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