I read a lot of contemporary literature, I watch all the movies I can, more series than I should, and I read more newspapers than I would like. But in all these genres I observe a common denominator: that of the victim as the protagonist of the contemporary story, whether in novels, films or political parties. Different voices that share the place from which they legitimize their discourse: communicating the trauma to the public or the electorate. And although I do not judge whether this trend produces better or worse works, the truth is that I am beginning to miss new perspectives. Maybe that’s why I’ve been so happy with the success of 20,000 species of bees, the debut feature by Estíbaliz Urresola nominated for 15 Goya Awards: a story about the search for gender identity told through intimacy and not trauma. A small revolution.
Because if I tell you that 20,000 species of bees tells the story of an eight-year-old trans girl, what can you imagine? The childhood of a girl or that of a victim? The discovery of an identity or that of a trauma? You will notice that you do not need to have seen the movie to answer. And that is because we have become accustomed to tragedy coloring everyday life to gain attention, legitimacy and even truth. Sometimes I read (or hear myself say) that a book or a movie is good because it hits, hurts, bothers or denounces. Because it happens that, in a political context where both beliefs and ideologies (and even intellectual authority) have lost importance, legitimacy no longer falls on the social class or the revolution, but on the status of victim.
However, 20,000 species of bees It has made me think that perhaps the most committed art is, precisely, that which dares to enter into the intimacy of problems from the delicacy of everyday life. Because to understand a conflict—whether intimate or political, where they differ—you have to understand what happens on a day-to-day basis, in that space that is so difficult to navigate and name. And, from there, being able to move with that which has neither challenge nor conflict nor battle nor victory, nor even a protagonist. And so it turns out that to tell the story of Lucía (the trans girl played by a dazzling Sofía Otero), Estíbaliz Urresola enters the intimacy of her mother, her brother, her sister, her father, her grandmother, her aunt, from her town… And by the way she reminds us that the protagonists of a story are not only those who suffer it, but also those who love them, their relatives, their friends, also their past and the spaces they inhabit together.
We are all in life and we all have to learn. And this teaching reaches an existential proposal in this film that goes beyond the learning of the protagonist girl and commits us all. Maybe that’s why she is able to bring us closer across difference. I think maybe that’s why it’s titled like this: 20,000 species of bees, because it is naming different ways of being the same thing. And I think that I hope this narrative spills over into other stories, especially political ones, so lacking in imagination and empathy. I wish, for example, that Netanyahu would see her and understand that his victim status does not give her the right to be the sole protagonist of his story. May we all feel that only if we consider ourselves differently will we be able to think differently. And what we need.
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