23/02/2023 - BERLINALE 2023: The Basque filmmaker debuts with a poignant story about families that work as social beehives and where it is difficult to accept difference

(© Laia Lluch)

Estíbaliz Urresola has directed only one film to date, 20,000 Species of Bees [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Estíbaliz Urresola
film profile], selected for competition at the 73rd Berlinale. Although, she had already attracted attention for her last short film, Cuerdas, which premiered at the Cannes Critics' Week 2022 and was nominated for a Goya award. We are faced with an artist who continues to reap praise (and awards) for a project that, before its release in theatres, is already a success.

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Cineuropa: Perhaps the great theme of 20,000 Species of Bees is plurality, which is already evident in its title. Something as necessary as accepting the differences that also enrich us.
Estíbaliz Urresola: Absolutely, the film is a homage to diversity, as vouched for by the insects of the title, which allowed me to work on the image of the family beehive, where each bee has its specific and necessary role for the group to function. This higher organism (the hive) is governed by its own rules, which is interesting to identify in a family. This is where the tension is created between the individual and the collective, with this portrait of different, diverse and necessary bees (grandmothers, aunts, mothers, daughters, etc.) for social functioning. I was also interested not only in focusing on the journey of the character of Cocó/Lucía, the child protagonist, but also in how the gaze of those around her transformed. For that, I needed to create this environment of different people receiving, accepting and confronting the reality that is brought to the table.

It's hard to shake off labels. Society classifies and anything new causes a reaction against accepting it.
This has to do with ignorance, which causes fear, and our first reaction is to reject the unknown. Throughout history, we’ve been confronted with different realities that have frightened us at the time. We rejected them and in the end, through coexistence and understanding, we’ve ended up integrating them and valuing them as the richness that they are. I imagine that the same thing will happen with this reality. It’s true that transsexuality is nothing new, but transgender children have only recently come to light. Titles such as those being filmed internationally on this reality speak to the urgency and necessity of addressing the issue.

And from the conflict that your film raises, we hear apt statements like "No need to look the other way" or "Don't live in shame"; the strength we need to be ourselves, however we are.
Absolutely, you hit the nail on the head by reclaiming the idea of shame. Because it was one of the underlying themes I wanted to work on: how modesty had been a control mechanism in the social body to control both women and divergent identities that broke out of the rigid binary framework. By making individuals feel ashamed and embarrassed, their activities, desires and actions are restricted. In the case of women, these ideas are part of who they are. That’s why I wanted to explore how this shame has conditioned the expression, subjectivity and relationship with the world of these women in the film from different generations (the grandmother, the mother, the older teenager sister and the protagonist Lucía). That legacy is represented in 20,000 Species of Bees in the work of the father and in that workshop that we inherit and that somehow ends up being overthrown and perhaps offering a new paradigm to understand.

Women are again the focus of your work, as in your short films Cuerdas and Polvo somos. Are you particularly interested in femininity and its complexities?
As a viewer, I feel that the history of cinema owes a debt to the characters that I could have identified with or that would have built and contributed to me, because, on the contrary, I had clichéd characters that were vulnerable, weak, inactive and passive. As a director, I also wanted to bring a much more real image of women, of those around me, whom I’ve never seen on the screen. Women of action, with doubts, contradictions, conflicts, who fight and keep quiet, but who sing and speak. Luckily we’re going through a period of change, but when I studied film they weren’t in films or books. I’ve always wanted to give a fairer and more diverse representation of women, something I do intellectually but also viscerally, because I want to do it that way.

(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)