20,000 SPECIES OF BEES

20.000 ESPECIES DE ABEJAS

By Estibaliz URRESOLA

I MEDIATE SERVICING - as CONS

LGBT - Development 2022

Lucía is 6 years old and she is a girl with a penis who, in the middle of the separation of her parents, is longing for the summer to come. For the whole family, these will be the holidays in which they will start to see each other the way they really are.

Festivals
& Awards

Berlinale - Berlin IFF 2023
Competition Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance, Guild Film Prize, Berliner Morgenpost Readers’ Jury Award
    • Year of production
    • 2022
    • Genres
    • LGBT, Family, Children's
    • Countries
    • SPAIN, FRANCE
    • Languages
    • BASQUE, SPANISH, FRENCH
    • Budget
    • 1 - 3 M$
    • Duration
    • 100 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Estibaliz URRESOLA
    • Writer(s)
    • Estibaliz URRESOLA
    • Producer(s)
    • Estibaliz URRESOLA (SIRIMIRI FILMS), Lara IZAGIRRE (GARIZA FILMS), Itxaso ESPINAL (GARIZA FILMS )
    • Synopsis
    • Lucia is a 5 year old girl with a penis who is longing for the summer to come so that she can escape from school where she has so many problems. For Lucía, the two long summer months that she is going to spend with her siblings in her mother’s home town are the perfect opportunity for her to show herself to everyone as the girl she is. It is also a special summer for Miren, her mother, as she and Xan, Lucía’s father, are separating and they have decided that Xan will use the summer period to move out of the family home. The children, however, know nothing of this.

      But things won’t be so easy for Lucía. The municipal swimming pools, where the children go every day, are a hostile territory where her body reveals a problem for the external gaze. A gaze that also disturbs, questions and finally affects Miren and the way she is rearing her children. In this situation, Lucía looks for an alternative to the long summer hours in the company of her grandmother Lita and her great-aunt Lourdes, the bee keeper. The two women represent the Christian and pagan facets of traditional Basque society. It will be with Lourdes and the bees that Lucía will feel truly respected and able to express herself freely.

      The pulling down of the old tree that lodges one of the family’s oldest hives will mark the passing of summer.
      “The major events of the family must be presented to the bees” she has been told by Lourdes, for whom bees are “a sacred animal”. That is why Lucía decides to face one of her greatest fears and present herself to the hive, so that the venerated insects might accept her as the girl she is.
    • Partners & financing
    • GARIZA FILMS
    • Production schedule
    • 2018 _Idea and 1st treatment
      _A Room of One's Own artistic residency
      _Film scriptwriting support from the Basque Government

      2019 _ Development Phase I
      _The project was selected at NOKA, a program supported by the Basque Government where Estibaliz was accompanied in scriptwriting with Celia Rico (Journey to a Mother's Room); in direction with Anahi Berneri (Alanis; Because of You); production with Luisa Romeo (Maria and the Others; Trote) and a global view of marketing, distribution and worldwide sales. The program lasted a whole year.
      _Development assistance from the Provincial Council of Alava.

      2020_
      _The screenplay was chosen by the Spanish Association of Screenwriters DAMA for screenwriting assistance.
      _The project was selected, out of 200 projects, at the precious The Screen - La Incubadora, a residency supported by ECAM (the film school in Madrid, Spain).
      _We are now registering the script in mentoring workshops such as: Sources Script Development, Ekran + Film Development...
      _We will send the production dossier to possible co-producers, distributors and TV stations at the San Sebastian Film Festival as we have been selected in the MEDIA CREATIVE EUROPE "International Coproduction" workshop taking place at the event.

      2021 _ Development Phase II
      _Search for the latest sources of funding: public grants, international sales agents _Locations and castings
      _Teaser

      2022
      _Pre-production
      _Filming will take place in the summer of 2022
      _Post-production

      2023 _Premiere in a Grade A Festival (Cannes, Berlin, Venecia, Toronto, San Sebastián...)
    • Beginning of shooting
    • May 02, 2022
    • End of shooting
    • Jul 04, 2022