COUNTRY
Spain
YEAR2023
DURATION118 min
WRITING Arantxa Echevarría
CAST Yeju Ji, Daniela Shiman Yang, Ella Qiu, Xinyi Ye, Valeria Fernández, Julio Hu Chen, Qingfei Zhu, Leonor Watling, Carolina Yuste, Pablo Molinero
SYNOPSIS At the beginning of the school year, two Chinese girls meet in a school. Everyone takes for granted that they will be friends, but they don’t agree on anything. Lucía, a second-generation immigrant, feels Spanish and wants to fit in with the rest. She wishes to have parents like those of her friends, but she’s embarrassed of hers: they don’t speak Spanish, work 14 hours in a market and don’t let her to even celebrate her birthday in a burger restaurant. The other girl is Xiang and is adopted, something that her features give her away wherever she goes. She wonders about her biological family. She doesn’t feel Chinese and doesn’t get to blend in the school. Both of their paths will cross, then they will separate, and finally, they will become essential for each other.
Arantxa Echevarría
She studied Image Science in Madrid and Cinematography Production at Sydney Community College. Since 1991, she has combined her professional career with advertising and cinema works. In the producing field, she made more than twenty feature films. She’s director at TVE in
Cuestión de pelotas, in which the Royal Spanish Football Federation (Real Federación Española de Fútbol), is forced to regulate the women football players’ situation. In 2010, she directed her first short film,
Panchito, awarded with more than fifteen national and international awards. In 2018, she became the first female director in Spanish cinema selected on the Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Festival with her first feature film,
Carmen y Lola, which also got a Goya award for best new director. She’s part of the Asociación de Mujeres Cineastas y Medios Audiovisuales (CIMA).
FILMOGRAPHY
Chinas (feature film,2023),
Carmen y Lola (feature film, 2018),
De noche y de pronto (2012),
Don Enrique de Guzmán (short film, 2011),
Panchito (short film, 2010)
