The Spanish child actress Sofía Otero won this Saturday the Silver Bear for the best leading performance at the Berlinale'2023 for the film 20,000 species of bees, by the Basque director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren, in which she gives life to a transsexual girl. “Thank you, thank you very much”, said Sofía Otero, who is 9 years old, on the stage of the Berlinale Palast in Berlin, in which she listed several members of her family in her thanks (“to my father, Fernando Otero, the best father of the entire world") as well as the entire technical and artistic team of the film. With tears in her eyes, the girl said: "I want to dedicate my life to acting."
The film 20,000 species of bees recounts the inner experience, with its struggles and fears, of Aitor –the 8-year-old character played by Sofía– who cannot hide his restlessness when he is still called by that name or by the more neutral name of Cocó , a family nickname. He wants to be Lucía now. Urresola's delicate film is a choral story of transit and search for the girl and her family during a short summer vacation in the Basque town, where her grandmother and a beekeeper aunt live.
The Golden Bear for best film went to the French documentary Sur l'Adamant, by filmmaker Nicolas Philibert, which filmed mental health patients and caregivers in a floating Paris hub on the River Seine. Meanwhile, the Grand Jury Prize and Jury Prize Silver Bears were, respectively, for the German tragicomedy Roter Himmel, by Christian Petzold –who on stage paid homage to the recently deceased Spanish director Carlos Saura–, and for the Portuguese Mal viver , by João Canijo, respectively.
Frenchman Philippe Garrel won best director silver for Le grand chariot , about a saga of puppeteers, and Austrian actress Thea Ehre won best supporting performance silver for Bis ans Ende der Nacht , in which she plays a transsexual recently released from prison who acts as bait in a police investigation. The Silver Bear for Best Screenplay went to Angela Schanelec for Peculiar Music, and for Outstanding Artistic Contribution went to Hélène Louvart for the cinematography of Disco Boy, by director Giacomo Abbruzzese.
The Berlin festival thus ended last night with the award ceremony of the official awards of the international jury of the Bears, chaired by the American actress Kristen Stewart, of which the Catalan director Carla Simón, Golden Bear of the Berlinale'2022 with Alcarràs . The rest of the jury was made up of: the Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani, the German director Valeska Grisebach, the American Francine Maisler, the Romanian director Radu Jude and the Chinese Johnnie To. In total, 19 films of the most diverse genres have competed for the Bears in this edition.
On the other hand, the Spanish film Samsara , directed by the Galician Lois Patiño, who was competing in the Encounters section, dedicated to new voices in cinema, won the Special Jury Prize, made up in this case by other professionals in the sector, not by the members of the jury of the Bears.
