20,000 species of bees is expected 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 performance for little SofÃa Otero – chosen from a casting of more than 500 girls – and the Golden Bisnaga at the best film at the Malaga Festival, in which Patricia López Arnaiz also won the award for best supporting actress, this story that addresses the complexity of trans childhood arrives at the box office ready to conquer the public as well.
In Málaga, the director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren, also author of the script of this acclaimed first opera, toasted the triumph to the family of Ekai, a 16-year-old transsexual teenager who committed suicide in Ondarroa in 2018 while waiting for treatment hormonal and from whom the story of the film arose. “I was deeply moved by a letter he wrote wishing that other young trans people had it easier than he did. With the desire to collect the testimony of this letter, I wanted to approach this reality in a way that meant an opportunity for understanding, avoiding the stigma and the dark and gray representation that these stories have sometimes had in the world of cinema. I wanted to bring light and understanding to an issue that is much closer and easier to understand if we approach it from the heart”, comments the Alabaster filmmaker, who documented herself on the subject, in an interview with La Vanguardia from Berlin interviewing several transgender boys and girls.
The film is shot in Basque, Spanish and a bit of French, “the different languages ​​that gather around the border that the family crosses at the beginning of the journey. It also talks about cultural and national identities and diversity”, he continues.
López Arnaiz plays Ane, a woman immersed in 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’s house, where her mother Lita lives (Itziar Lazkano) and his aunt Lourdes (Ane Gabarain), a woman linked to beekeeping. It will be a summer of changes for everyone, especially for 8-year-old Aitor, who does not recognize himself by this name and insists on being called first Cocó and then LucÃa. The grandmother, who doesn’t have a good relationship with her daughter, doesn’t take kindly to the grandson wearing long hair, so they will tell the village.
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 a conflict to be who they are . The grandmother had to give up what she loved, sewing, to work in the service of her husband’s workshop. Ane has gone through many doubts due to the lack of recognition of her sculptor father in her as a sculptor, a fact that has not given her enough security to exercise and that has finally resulted in an unsatisfied life”. And he continues: “Ane is not living the life she would like to live and this makes it more difficult for her to see what is happening to her son. All the steps forward that Cocó takes in the conquest of her own identity are, for the mother, a mirror in which to ask questions about what she is doing with her life”. This is why the great-aunt plays such an important role in the transformation of Aitor-Cocó-LucÃa. “This woman lives in a state of silence and in the middle of nature. She is a woman who observes. And, in this space of trust and respect, Cocó suddenly expresses itself for the first time”.
“Bees are the guarantors of biodiversity in nature, and the film is a song to diversity. Each bee has a different function and all are necessary for the survival of the hive. I thought the concept of difference as virtue, value and wealth was very beautiful”, explains the director, also the creator of Cuerdas, a short nominated for the Goya this year and awarded with the Forqué.
Five years have passed since he started writing the script in 2018; enough time for society to better accept the reality of trans childhood? “I think there have been enormous advances, but even so it remains a taboo subject and in many families it is lived with a certain shame and shame”. According to Urresola, “the biggest thing is the fear that external ignorance will cause suffering in the children, and this fear can lead families to want to avoid taking a step of acceptance that the children are demanding”. For this reason, the producer values ​​the work being done from several fronts to raise awareness of this situation: pedagogical, institutional and audiovisual. After a few years of professional overcrowding, he advocates “enjoying the moment” before facing new challenges. A well-deserved victory.
