“Olmo” review: the next Berlin story

Life mobility as a 14 -year -old boy represented a challenge to everyone who had never tried it, but Aivan Uttapa has more difficult than most of them. With his father Nestor (Gustavo Sanchez Para) confined to his bed – or, in the best days, a wheelchair – due to multiple sclerosis, he is forced to share care duties with his worker mother Cecilia (Andrea Suarez Baz) and his high school, Sister Anna (Rosa Armandrez), who It is not happy to see her social life that stopped the needs of a sick parent. The situation will be painful enough under any circumstances, but Olmo is also consumed through the same existential centuries that fill all 14 years of waking up. It is close enough to the world of high school concerts and beautiful girls to understand that he wants to be part of it, but he is ignorant of how to leave childhood behind the alleged freedoms that come with a teenage life.

There is a magician Fernando Embki movie “Olmo” in tension between the problems of family life or death and the wrong adventures that look like this through the eyes of a teenager in the eighties of the last century in New Mexico. With a case of Nestor is likely to take a turn to the worse, and the family facing the evacuation if Cecilia lost any other seizures in its waitress, Olmo has a lot of concern. But in most days, his greatest interest is to compete for his neighbor and crushing Nina (Melanie Frota) – without talking to her or showing any hint that he may be interested, of course.

These conflicting demands for Olmo’s time reaching her head when he and his friend Miguel (Diego Olmido) are invited to a Nina concert, provided that they are provided with Stereo. He is trying to rebuild the broken Nestor platform under the supervision of his father’s auditory, but the differences about the wires that must be contacted turn into a painful argument that illuminates the bitterness of Nestor because of his lack of autonomy and the methods that Olmo feels his own wings were cut by the continuous needs of his father. In a bout of anger, he commits the sin of his Cardinal family and leaves his father without supervising the night – a danger that forces the young man to face the limits of an idea like independence when she lives within the unity of the family.

Imagine an alternative version of “Napoleon Dynamite”, where everyone was played for sincerity instead of the satirical paradox and you will have an approximate idea of ​​the feelings that “Olmo” picks up. Embcke never moved away from the embarrassment of Olmo and Miguel’s life, from their unfamiliar clothes and the lack of social skills to Odysse required to produce a Working Stereo. Some scenes can turn into a tense comedy if someone who has less sympathy for his characters, but Embcke maintains his story rooted in the idea that this entire family is only trying to do the best in a world that never disturbs them with their hand.

Certainly there is a more serious story hiding inside “Olmo” about the losses that the parents are retracted about and the health of the father of the working class. But with just 84 minutes to work with it, eimbcke and Co-Colliter Vanesa Garnica use a light touch of hint to the dark position without engaging in it directly as well. By telling the story through the eyes of such a young hero, Embcke is able to reduce the shares of some events with the amplification of those from others to tell a balanced story that should let the fans smile. Because at the end of the day, “Olmo” is not a story about disability – it relates to the perspective and the way you distort young people, for the best and worst.

Every time the film approaches Olmo and Miguel attempts to fit, Embcke implicitly asks our sympathy by forcing us to remember how things that were important to us in 14 years seem late. Despite her impressive interest in culture details, you do not need to be of Spanish origin, from New Mexico, or a child in the 1980s to estimate the movie. All you need is some memories saved for early teenage years. In other words, “Olmo” is really universal.

Row: B+

Olmo was first shown at the Berlin International Film Festival 2025. She is currently seeking to distribute us.

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