Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren first had the idea for making her debut film when she read about the suicide of a 16-year-old trans boy in the Basque Country where she lives. What struck her about the case was the hopeful note that the teenager left behind, imagining a kinder, more accepting world. “He said he was making this decision to shine some light on people in his situation, for visibility. He was accepted by his family, but he was suffering a lot. It’s very sad.”
Solaguren is speaking via Zoom from her apartment in San Sebastian. Her film, 20,000 Species of Bees, premiered in February at Berlin, where – in the biggest surprise of the awards night – its lead actor, nine-year-old Sofía Otero, scooped the Silver Bear prize, making her the youngest ever winner. Since then, it’s been all-go for Solaguren. Next week, she takes the film on tour to Iceland, then it’s Toulouse followed by London; after that Japan. Sounds exhausting, I say. “Everything in October!” she beams. “But all the travelling can be a bit overwhelming.”
The Basque community is small and tight-knit. So when Solaguren first had the idea for the film back in 2018, and approached a local support group for trans children and their families, it turned out the family of the 16-year-old boy who killed himself were members. At the beginning, she didn’t try to speak to them. “I didn’t want to look like a person trying to benefit from their pain,” she says. “To be like, ‘That happened. Here’s a story.’ I didn’t want to do that.”
Besides, the film she had in mind was not his story but rather the kinder world he’d hoped would be his legacy. “To take his letter as my, my …” she pauses, trying to find the right words in English, then starts again. “I want to make a luminous, bright film. So trans kids also could have a healthy reference. Not [a character] who would suffer or die or be a problem for their families.”
After spending time with 20 or so families, she wrote the story of a trans girl who, over the course of a summer, finds the confidence to be herself. This is eight-year-old Lucía, played by Otero, and using hand-held, close-up camerawork, Solaguren gives us an intimate glimpse of her interior world.
The film is also a portrait of three generations of women in Lucía’s family – or “hive” as Solaguren calls it (since 99% of bees in a hive are female). The intricacy of their relationships, how they are all formed by each other as well as wider society, has the astonishing texture of real life, almost like a documentary.
Was this very deliberate, I ask Solaguren: writing a script that feels a million miles from the polarising debates around trans rights? She nods enthusiastically. “I feel like in Spain, the issue has become like a weapon politically. But we are talking about real people, struggling with real difficulties.”
The film shifts perspective: in one scene we see the world through Lucía’s eyes; in the next it’s her mother Ane (Patricia López Arnaiz), a sculptor. At the start of the film, Ane is relaxed with her “son” (as she sees Lucía) having long hair and wearing gender-neutral clothes. But she is increasingly worried when Lucía starts to openly identify as a girl.
Solaguren’s interest in parents of trans kids came from her interviews about the transition process. “What some of these families were telling me was that it wasn’t the kids who had changed. The kids were the same all the time. What had changed was the others’ gaze. The transformation is the way that we look at these kids, no?”
When it came to casting, Solaguren was adamant that she didn’t want to audition cis boys for the role of Lucía. Instead, a casting call went out to trans groups, primary schools, dance clubs and children’s theatres for “girls”. “I wasn’t asking for trans girls or cis girls. I was asking for girls.” In the end, the children in the film are played by a mix of trans and cis kids, all first-time actors. On the advice of lawyers in the trans community, and at the request of children themselves, their gender identities are not being revealed publicly.
The role of Lucía was given to Sofía Otero after casting went to the wire. “Sofía came along to the first audition, but she was such a happy girl, nothing like Lucía,” remembers Solaguren. “So we didn’t see her.” So this sunny little girl was cast in a small role, and it was only months later, after meeting 500 more wannabes, the clock ticking, that they went back and re-auditioned her. After the Silver Bear win, a decision was taken to shield her from publicity.
Solaguren herself was 27 when she took the plunge to become a director. “It took me a long time to believe that I could even try.” She grew up in an ordinary working-class family; her dad worked in a factory and her mum was a housewife. As a child, she spent hours writing and illustrating stories. At university she studied audio-visual communications and toyed with becoming a journalist.
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Everything changed when she took a film class. “Up to this moment I just thought a film was a film, no?” she laughs. “But thanks to a great teacher I discovered film analysis. It was like going into an unknown universe.” She tells me this so enthusiastically, gesturing with her hands, that she flicks out her headphones. “It got me,” she finishes with a laugh.
It was the films of the Italian neorealists that spoke most directly to her. “I started discovering new characters in films, like kids and women. I identified with … I felt very identified with, by this cinema …” Again she struggles to find words in English, finally settling on: “It was my language.” Critics have compared her film-making style in 20,000 Species of Bees to Ken Loach and the Dardenne brothers, praising her compassion and humane gaze.
After graduating, she worked in TV. “I got a job for an association of producers as a …” She mimes typing with her fingers.
Doing admin? Secretary? “Yes something like that.” She went on to work in TV post-production.
In 2011, she took the leap, moved to Barcelona to study an MA in film. “I decided to go for my dream, let’s say. But the whole trajectory has been a process of struggling with my own fears, trying to believe in myself.” I ask if imposter syndrome is a concept in Spain. She nods: “I found a lot of women have different symptoms of this. Not asking for the money they deserve. From the outside, I can think, ‘That’s not fair! You deserve it!’ But it’s a big difference from within. I don’t know what happens. It’s as if we really still don’t believe this space is also for us.”
Did she ever meet the family of the boy whose story inspired the film? “Yes. About 12 months before shooting, I introduced myself.” They had already heard about her film and she gave them the script to read. “They told me they were really touched that it could have helped in some way.”
20,000 Species of Bees is at the London film festival on 10 and 15 October, and released in the UK on 27 October
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