The Álava director competes for the Golden Bear at the Berlinale with her debut film, ‘20,000 species of bees’, “a hymn to the diversity of identities”
Estibaliz Urresola (Bilbao, 1984) is the first Spanish director to compete for the Golden Bear with a debut feature. If last year Carla Simón achieved the feat of winning the Berlinale with ‘Alcarràs’, in this edition the director of Llodio based in Hernani is the only Spanish presence in the official section with ‘20,000 species of bees’. Patricia López Arnáiz, Itziar Lazkano and Ane Gabarain are the stars of Urresola’s first feature film, which was nominated for a Goya for best short film for ‘Cuerdas’.
Spoken in Basque, Spanish and French, the film follows a family in the process of separation, which returns in the summer from Baiona, where they live, to their mother’s house in Llodio. The axis of the story is little Cocó, who wants to be called Lucía and not Aitor (Sofía Otero, a nine-year-old girl from Basauri). The struggle to reaffirm the identity of a transgender girl is the backbone of a whole plot rich in topics such as the mother’s postponed artistic dreams, the figure of an artist father with a not very exemplary life, and the sorority networks established between the three generations. of women who make up a film that could make history this Saturday at the Berlinale. Later, ‘20,000 species of bees’ will compete at the Malaga Festival and will be released in theaters on April 21.
–The germ of the script is the suicide in 2018 of Ekai Lersundi, a 16-year-old transsexual adolescent from Ondarroa, who was waiting for hormone treatment that never came.
–Ekai wrote a letter that was published in the media that seemed sad and at the same time hopeful, if this tragic event admits hope. He made that decision to bring to the surface the suffering he suffered and with the hope that the generations that came after him would find an easier and more accepting scenario. I grabbed on to his dying wish. The film comes five years later and society has come a long way in its understanding of that reality in this time. I have also been updating myself regarding how families with trans children live.
–There is an exciting French documentary film, ‘A girl’, which I suppose you have taken into account. It shows the suffering of the little ones and their families.
I think it’s a wonderful film, a documentary extraordinarily executed in a filmic manner. It is very valuable because it brings you closer to understanding from emotion. You access that family and the viewer’s gaze with prejudices and preconceived ideas on the subject is dismantled. The urgency of the feeling and the need that these boys and girls show is imposed. That film has been an obvious reference, I wanted to get the viewer access to the intimate dimension of this family by all means. ‘20,000 species of bees’ is fiction, not a documentary, but it shares its naturalism with ‘Cuerdas’, the absence of gimmicky devices. I want the viewer to understand what happens to this family from a place that is not merely rational.
–That the leading family moves from Baiona to Llodio to spend those summer days, that they cross the border, is not free.
– No. The border is geopolitical, it divides a territory into two states, it is an almost binary issue: the Basque Country corresponds to France or Spain. That binary runs through the entire film, the world is dual: men-women, good-bad, day-night, we-you. Everything is raised in irreconcilable dichotomies, the idea of continuum cannot exist. In addition, different languages always meet around a border, which in turn speak of different cultural identities. The film is a hymn to the diversity of identities. However, the main border was symbolic, the one that this family has to cross. His mental limit is presented at the beginning of the film and then it develops.
–’20,000 species of bees’ is, above all, a women’s film. The father figure (Martxelo Rubio) is absent almost until the end of the film.
This marriage is breaking up. The father makes progress in logistical matters, such as looking for two houses, solves the material aspects, while Ane (Patricia López Arnáiz) can return to the town to carry out a sculpture that can provide her with a stable job as a teacher in Baiona. Being separated, she will need a bigger source of income than she has been up to now. I worked with the two actors who were a couple who broke up, but didn’t throw things at each other’s heads. Cooperate even though the relationship is weak. The important thing is that the children are in the best conditions. The father remains a step behind because I am interested in exploring the advances of Lucía’s character in the conquest of her own identity and in the mother, who is challenged by that reality: what has she done with her own life, what has she stopped doing? for having experienced life through her condition as a woman. I have brought together women to reflect beyond what is trans about what the condition of women has implied in the different generations that I show. How she has operated in them like a DNA that transmits the legacy of shame and modesty as a control mechanism.
Patricia López Arnáiz and Sofía Otero, mother and daughter in the film.
–The figure of the protagonist’s father, now deceased, an artist who was not a faithful husband, is also important. Now the debate on whether we should separate the artist from the person is very much alive.
-That’s how it is. And the figure of Lita, his wife, always in the shadow of that father, necessary for her to prosper and develop. That grandmother embodies those great women who have been behind those great artists, who have not been recognized for her great contribution. She spoke of three generations of women and also of three generations of men. An absent father and a dead grandfather who are very present. And Lucía’s brother, Eneko, who represents the hopeful future of masculinities that will grow to the extent that they are part of a society in which women have the space they need in their own right and other minority identities are embraced, such as the trans The further back we go in the family lineage, the more questionable shades the male figure takes on.
–How do you achieve that naturalness and intimacy in family scenes?
There have been many rehearsals. The actresses bring a human component, both Patricia López Arnáiz, Ane Gabarain and Itziar Lazkano have given themselves with unusual generosity. For me it was very important to create a family bond, the skin-to-skin issue in a family, which you cannot interpret, you can only feel. We rehearsed many formulas: the children alone on one side, with their mother and father… We worked on scenes from this family’s past, so that when they came to shoot they would have freshness in the new sequences.
Estibaliz Urresola directs little Sofía Otero on the set of ‘20,000 species of bees’.
–Where does the girl Sofía Otero come from, who plays Aitor/Cocó/Lucía? Is she eight years old, like the character?
–He is nine years old and is from Basauri. She came to the first casting session and I found a wonderful, intelligent, happy and outgoing girl. I never saw her as the lead, but rather as one of the girls in a pool scene. But she showed such an ability to improvise and get into the game that after seeing more than five hundred girls I thought of her. Ella cocó supports 90% of the movie, she couldn’t be just anyone.
Sofía Otero and Ane Gabarain, who plays the little girl’s aunt on the tape.
–What do you expect from passing through the Berlinale?
-That the film likes a lot. It is the first time that I share it with the audience, the litmus test. I am very happy with the work of the whole team and we are going to celebrate it in style. I hope it excites and generates conversation and dialogue around the subject. That helps the viewer to see this reality in a way that they would never have expected to find.
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