A good solid crowd pleasing film to start off my film festival journey for 2026. It came highly recommended by my MIFF buddy Kyle, which is not always a good thing as it raises your expectations.

It tells the story of a grumpy old woman, Olga (Teresita Sánchez), who lives alone in an apartment and is irritated by just about everything. The first ten minutes of the film is her wordless battle with a fly.

Olga needs minor surgery on her foot and can’t afford it. She gets the idea to rent a room in her apartment out to a family member staying close by the nearby hospital. She very begrudgingly rents the room to Tulio (Enrique Arreola), making it clear that he gets the use of the room and the bathroom (as long as he doesn’t take too long,) but can’t use any other room in the apartment.

What she doesn’t realise is that Tulio has his young son Cristian (Bastian Escpbar) with him. They have travelled to this city because Cristian‘s mother is receiving treatment at the hospital. Tulio sneaks Cristian in after dark and makes sure he is gone in the morning. We see a lot of Tulio and Cristian in the first act, and its clear that they have a close and joyful relationship. Tulio is the antithesis of Olga, finding wonder and delight in the mundane and engaging with Cristian within the parameters of his young world.

The film is shot in absolutely gorgeous black-and-white, and director Fernando Eimbcke makes the most of the beautiful tonality and architectural simplicity of this part of the city. There’s lots of filtered light coming through windows, repetition of scenes, close ups of faces, and it puts us out of time in some place that might be the near past.

The expected trajectory of the story is that Olga‘s heart will be softened by the irrepressible Cristian, and there was a moment when I hoped that perhaps the story might head somewhere darker just to confound our expectations. However, the narrative aims fairly consistently down the middle of the road. It doesn’t overplay its hand though, giving us glimpses of characters and story without underlining how we are supposed to feel. The camera work often lingers on detail, with faces a little bit out of frame and there is something intimate and absorbing about it.

It reminded me a little bit of Roma (2018), probably in its gorgeous black-and-white tones and slightly nostalgic Mexican vibes. I could’ve done with just a little less cuteness to some of the moments, but that is me perhaps being a little bit more like Olga than Tulio and Cristian.