The Spanish Film Academy has chosen the three films that choose to represent our country in the fight for the Oscar for best international film, which was previously called non-English speaking. ‘Close your eyes’, by Víctor Erice; ‘20,000 species of bees’, Estibaliz Urresola’s debut feature; and ‘The Snow Society’, by Juan Antonio Bayona, are the three candidates. On September 20, it will be announced which of them competes on behalf of our country.
The actress Natalia de Molina, the producer Esther García, and the director and screenwriter Borja Cobeaga, members of the Hollywood Academy and the Spanish Film Academy, have read the titles of the three shortlisted films, accompanied by the president of the Fernando Mendez-Leite Academy. This previous selection of three titles seeks to give them an advertising push. Released last April, ‘20,000 species of bees’ brought more than 150,000 viewers to theaters, becoming an independent film phenomenon.
Its premiere at the last Berlinale was met with excellent reviews and the performance award for the 9-year-old girl by Basauri Sofía Otero, the soul of a film that shows the emotional earthquake that a trans girl causes in a family during one summer. Also winner of the Biznaga de Oro at the Malaga Festival, where Patricia López Arnaiz won the performance award, Estibaliz Urresola’s first film achieved more than 50% of its revenue in cinemas in the Basque Country and Navarra.
Urresola began writing the script shocked by the suicide in 2018 of Ekai Lersundi, a 16-year-old transsexual teenager from Ondarroa, who was waiting for hormone treatment that never came. The film by the director of Llodio would not have been possible without her contact with Naizen, the Association of Families of Transsexual Minors of Navarre and the Basque Country, where she met Sofía Otero. She is the soul of this story shot in Spanish, Basque and French, starring a family in the process of separation, who returns from Baiona, where they live, to their mother’s house in Llodio during a vacation.
‘20,000 species of bees’ is available on platforms (Movistar Plus+, Filmin, Rakuten TV, Vodafone TV, Orange TV, Google Play, iTunes, Amazon Prime) and from September 12 it will go on sale on DVD and Blu-ray . It is also one of the five titles nominated for the LUX European Audience Film Award and will be released in theaters in the United States, France, Germany, Brazil, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia , Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Austria, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom and Canada.
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