About this episode
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
