20,000 species of bees is called to be the Spanish film of the year. After its excellent reception at the Berlinale, where it won the Silver Bear for the best leading role for little Sofía Otero -chosen from a casting of more than 500 girls- and the Golden Biznaga for the best film at the Malaga festival, in The one that Patricia López Arnaiz also won the supporting actress award for, this story that addresses the complexity of trans childhood, comes to the billboard ready to conquer the public as well.
In Malaga, the director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren, also the author of the script for her acclaimed debut feature, brought victory to the family of Ekai, a 16-year-old transsexual teenager who committed suicide in Ondarroa in 2018 while awaiting hormone treatment and from which he emerged The story of the movie.
"I was deeply moved by a letter he wrote hoping that other young trans people would have it easier than him. With the desire to pick up the baton from that letter, I wanted to address this reality in a way that was an opportunity to understand, fleeing the stigma and the dark and gray representation that these stories have sometimes had in the cinema. I wanted to shed light and understanding on an issue that is much closer and easier to understand if we approach it from the heart", comments the director from Alava to La Vanguard in an interview before knowing the winners of the Berlin festival.
The film is shot in Basque, Spanish and a bit of French, "the different languages that meet around a border, which is the one that the family crosses at the beginning of the trip. It also talks about cultural and national identities and diversity ", keep going.
López Arnaiz plays Ane, a woman plunged into a professional and marital crisis who takes advantage of the summer holidays to travel with her three children from France to the Basque Country to her family home, where her mother Lita (Itziar Lazkano) and her aunt live. Lourdes (Ane Gabarain), a woman linked to the breeding of bees. It will be a summer of changes for all of them, especially for eight-year-old Aitor, who does not recognize himself by that name and insists on calling himself first Cocó and then Lucía. The grandmother, who does not have a good relationship with her daughter, does not see her grandson with long hair, according to what they will say in town.
The generational clash is evident: "I didn't want to focus only on the path of trans identity, represented by the character of Cocó, but to go further and talk about how all the women in the family have been in conflict because of who they are. The grandmother had to give up what she liked, sewing, to work at the service of her husband's workshop. Ane has gone through many doubts due to the lack of recognition of her as a sculptor by her sculptor father, who has not given her enough security to exercise, and which has ultimately resulted in an unsatisfied life.
And he continues: "Ane does not live the life she wanted to lead and that is expressed in poverty in all aspects that surround her. All of this makes it more difficult for her to see what is happening to her son. All the steps she is taking Going forward in this conquest of her own identity is a mirror for her own mother in which to question herself about what she is doing with her life". Hence the great-aunt plays such an important role in the transformation of Aitor-Cocó-Lucía. "That woman lives in a state of silence and in the middle of nature. She is a woman that she observes. And in that space of trust and respect, the girl suddenly expresses herself for the first time."
Linking this transformation with the family hive and the role of bees was essential: "Bees are the guarantors of biodiversity in nature and the film is a hymn to diversity. Each bee has a different function and all are necessary for the survival of the hive. The concept of difference as virtue, value and wealth seemed very nice to me. But there is also this idea in many territories such as the Basque Country, Asturias or some Eastern European countries that the bee is an animal sacred and that the most important transits that are lived in a family closely linked to the breeding of bees are communicated to the hive. This relationship between the human and the bee seemed very beautiful to me to illustrate some of the aspects through which the film passes ", explains the director of Strings, a short nominated for a Goya and awarded with the Forqué.
Urresola acknowledges that the theme of identity was already present in his previous works. "In my first short, Adri, I talked about a swimmer who gets her period for the first time, and how this physiological event alters her perception of herself and her relationship with others. In Polvo Somos there is also this little family beehive where the roles of four women are mixed until they become something else. I am very interested in family relationships and how that gaze of the other affects us in who we are or believe we are and in that instance of identity as something personal and intimate or something collective" .
To prepare the film, the director met several boys and girls "who identified with a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth. And I begin to see that the questions that haunt me about who we are, how we can be who we are within the family, if there is that notion of identity as an autonomous agency..." Since you began writing the script in 2018, five years have passed until now, enough time for society to better accept the reality of the trans childhood? "I think that there have been enormous advances, even so it continues to be a taboo subject and in many families it is lived with a certain modesty and shame."
According to Urresola, "what there is most is fear that external ignorance will generate suffering in the sons and daughters and that fear can lead these families to want to avoid taking a step of acceptance that the children are demanding."
For this reason, the filmmaker values the work that is being done on various fronts to publicize this situation: pedagogical, institutional, and audiovisual. "Transsexuality has always been on the table but trans childhood has not been understood as something that has already been there since childhood. It does not arise in adulthood or has to do with militancy. In the history of humanity there have been many issues that have been new at the time and have given fear and have been oppressed ((homosexuality, lesbianism, race...) and you have to do a job and that takes time. We are already celebrating many of these aspects as improvements in the quality of life and respect for many identities".
Having a cast like the one that appears in 20,000 Species of Bees has been a dream for the filmmaker. "It has been a pleasure because everyone has been involved in an extraordinary way and they have done an incredible job." The rehearsals were a fundamental piece to be able to create the family ties that the film demanded. "There has been a super human relationship that has made filming more pleasant than I imagined," says the director, who needs to "enjoy the moment with peace and calm" before facing new challenges. A well deserved break.
