AIVAN UTTAPA, GUSTAVO SANCHEZ PARRA, AND DIEGO OMEDO IN OLMO
TRAILER
No laugh track
Eimbecke may be known only to a special audience but deserves a wider one. His films are a delight that is to be relied on. They have deadpan humor and a subtle understated aesthetic. They revel in a world of adolescent isolation and sharp family dynamics. The director loves static camera shots and his pacing is patient. His young males lead lives that for them are intense melodramas that willy nilly, for us, can verge into slapstick comedy.
This new film may be a bit more upbeat than formerly and contain more movement. It is about a fourteen-year-old, Olmo (Aivan Uttapa), who is impatient for life to begin, and his father Nestor (Gustavo Sánchez Parra), who is disabled. Very little happens, perhaps; but that very little is a lot for Olmo and for us, or he hopes it will be. The boy's high point is a serious almost-making out with a slightly older girl in a bedroom at a party. Olmo, we know by then, fantasizes himself as cool and devastating to women.
This time the setting is not somewhere in Mexico but 1979 New Mexico, a settlement of houses on the outskirts of town where the train runs by and mountains are in the distance. The adults tend to speak Spanish and the kids to reply in English (see the TEASER). Also present practicing this kind of one-sided bilingualism is Olmo's insolent older sister Ana (Rosa Armendariz), who when forbidden to smoke by their father, lights a cigarette and blows smoke right in his face. She refuses to help out at home and goes skating down the road to her roller disco date despite being needed and being denied car transportation.
The rent is three months overdue. Olmo's stern, unamused mother (Andrea Suarez Paz) is an underpaid waitress who is the sole safeguard against eviction. As the action begins, Olmo does not want her to go in to work overtime because that leaves him to care for Nestor and he wants to get out. He and his large, chubby best friend Miguel (Diego Olmedo), who has just arrived in a new pair of stylish leather boots, want to go to a party. To this end they steal Olmos's mother's stalled car, reviving it, taking the family stereo that will make them a welcome at the sparse festivities. As the car has to be made to work, so does the stereo, and for this Olmo enlists the invalid Miguel. It is a droll Eimbecke moment when Miguel delays every step of the way, insisting on not just fixing the stereo but precisely explaining to Olmo the principles of radio electronics. At least Miguel is really interested. It is a scene that might sound boring but keenly highlights the dynamics of father and son and ends with the delight of a turning cassette tape.
Olmo is ultimately an enduring tale of the love and conflict of father and son. Olmo yells at his father, but he is touched to learn he was named olmo, Spanish for "elm," because it was the wood that made ships strong. Eimbecke is a brilliant minimalist whose art grows from film to film and will also endure, like the elm.
Olmo, 84 mins., premiered Feb. 16, 2025 at the Berlinale in the Panorama section, and has shown also in fests at Sydney, Deauville, Toronto, San Sebastián, BFI London, AFI Fest, Morelia and Tijuana. Released by Greenwich Entertainment, Olmo will open Fri., Aug. 7, 2026 Quad Cinema in New York, Laemmle Theatres (such as the Nuart Theatre) in Los Angeles, AMC Boston Common 19, Digital Gym Cinema in San Diego, and SBIFF’s Film Center in Santa Barbara. Metacritic rating: 78%.