«20.000 especies de abejas», the breakthrough film of the year and a candidate to represent Spain at the Oscars, arrives on the FICBUEU screen tomorrow

BUEU. 08.08.2023. To see the film 20,000 especies de abejas, selected among the 3 pre-candidates from Spain for the next edition of the Oscars, on the cinema screen, the place is the FICBUEU. And there is only one chance: tomorrow. The feature film, written and directed by Alava director Estibaliz Urresola, will be screened this Saturday night at 9.30pm at Centro Social do Mar (Bueu). The film will be shown just two days after its pre-selection for the Awards.

The Bueu International Film Festival, which starts today, decided months ago to include in its program this film set in the Basque Country, which represents a realistic, delicate and emotional record of the childhood of a trans girl and the process of assimilation in her family. The film has become in recent months the breakthrough film of the year.

20.000 especies de abejas swept in the Malaga Festival and its protagonist, 8-year-old Sofía Otero, won the award for best actress in Berlin. Entrance to the screening costs 3 euros. It can be purchased at the Festival’s online store or at the FICBUEU ticket office from one hour before the screening. The film’s art director, Izaskun Urkijo, who also worked with Estibaliz Urresola in the short film Polvo somos  (2020), will be at the presentation of the film at FICBUEU.

Earlier, at 7:00 p.m., Urkijo will participate in a meeting with the Festival audience about the film to talk about the visual, aesthetic and scenographic work he did on this multi-award winning feature film. It will be in the Multipurpose Room of the Centro Social do Mar.

Cinematographic Days

The protection of the feature film will be the closing of the II Cinematographic Days organized by the FICBUEU. The competition’s bets for reflection and the dissemination of cinema and culture are behind these Days. It is a day dedicated to learning and exchanging ideas.

The day will start at 10.30 in the Multipurpose Room with a master class by researcher and teacher Nieves Febrer. Under the title Lo cotidiano, entorno y artificio, Febrer will focus on the concept of the everyday and its visual construction based on the works of various artists and filmmakers.

At 12.30 comes the conversation La estética del cine sensible, el realismo y la cotidianidad  en el cine. The critic and journalist Andrea Morán and Daniela Urzola, the researcher and collaborator of Revista Caimán Cuadernos de Cine, will address how everyday life is portrayed in cinema through the work of different authors. Selecting leading creators in sensitive cinema, they will explore how these themes and aspects are manifested in their audiovisual works.

In the afternoon, the FIC’s II Cinematographic Days will continue to address the particularities and narrative and aesthetic implications of sensitive and everyday cinema in a meeting about the work of one of the references in this type of film, the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. The meeting will be attended by Santos Díaz as moderator, Marta Peris, author of the thesis La casa japonesa a través del cine de Yasujiro Ozu, Professor Antonio Santos, specialist in Japanese and Asian cinema and author of the thesis Elogio del silencio: Yasujiro Ozu en los tiempos de estruendo (1903-1963) and Professor Jordi Puigdomènech, researcher and author of works such as Yasujiro Ozu, el tiempo y la nada, among others.

In the meeting with Izaskun Urkijo, already at 7 p.m., the art director of 20.000 especies de abejas will talk about her role in the aesthetic creation of the film, focusing on the creation and aesthetic planning of the film.

Also the art director Elia Robles, who participated in films like Ons or Malencolía, will lead this meeting. It will be right before the protection of the film. From the small spanish town of Bueu, 20.000 especies de abejas is on their way to the Oscars.