20,000 Species of Bees

Our eight-year-old protagonist has a seemingly liberal mother who allows her to wear androgynous clothes and calls her Cocó instead of a boyish name. Pink T-shirts have no gender, after all! It’s all true, but only at home where no strangers can see her. When the family leaves for the summer holidays to a small Basque village, Cocó suddenly has to act like a boy, so that nobody can say they haven’t raised her “right”. But our protagonist refuses to go back to her old name and boy swimsuit, and she is completely baffled by the fact that thousands of species of bees can live side by side without any problem, yet people cannot accept somebody different. Director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s intimate film depicts the most important moment in the life of a trans girl when she stubbornly decides to follow her dream – to be truly herself.

Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren

Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren is a director, screenwriter and documentarist. Her work is closely connected to the Basque Country where she was born. Her feature documentary Voces de papel won a Premio Txapela de Oro award at the San Sebastian film festival, and her short Cuerdas won a special mention from the jury at the Short Films Festival in Clermont-Ferrand. 20,000 Species of Bees is her live-action feature debut.