Filmmaker Néstor Lopez never got along well with his grandfather. He was an unpleasant man, difficult to read. He would have liked to become a singer or actor, but instead spent all 90 years of his life in the same quiet hamlet in rural Spain. Alongside his factory job, he devoted himself to making fishing flies by hand for catching trout and salmon.
After his grandfather’s death, Lopez visits his house. Above the front door, his grandfather’s unflattering nickname, “Canina,” is proudly displayed; Lopez is less pleased that people in the village now call him by the same name. Lopez zooms in on his grandfather’s life’s work: the fishing flies fashioned at the cold glass table, each feather-light “mosquito” with its own name and characteristics, carefully pinned to the wall.
With a light touch, Lopez describes his struggle between hatred and compassion, accompanied by a mix of nostalgic archive footage and quiet, beautiful images of deserted streets, crumbling houses, and rooms frozen in time, all set to the melancholy music of his grandfather’s favorite singer.
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