Icíar Bollaín

Icíar Bollaín Pérez-Mínguez (born 12 June 1967) is a Spanish filmmaker and actress. She is best known for directing Te Doy Mis Ojos (Take My Eyes), which won 7 Goya Awards. She was one of twin girls to a father who was an aeronautical engineer and a mother who was a music teacher. She grew up in a liberal household in which each member was allowed to follow their own inclination. Icíar and her twin sister Marina showed an early interest in the arts; Icíar was inclined towards filmmaking while her sister studied to become an operatic singer. Bollaín was cast in Víctor Erice's El Sur, for her acting debut.

Career Since then Icíar Bollaín has acted in fourteen films. At age 18, with her twin sister Marina, she was cast by their uncle Juan Sebastián Bollaín in two films: Las dos orillas (1987); several years later the twins appeared in Dime una mentira (1992). Icíar Bollaín also took roles in films directed by Felipe Vega, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón and José Luis Borau. Her red hair was partly what led Ken Loach to choose her for his film, Land and Freedom (1995), about the Spanish Civil War. Her experience working with Loach led her to write the book: Ken Loach: un observador solitario.

Bollain, at age 23, formed a production company which she named La Iguana, and made two short films: Baja Corazón (1992) and Los Amigos del muerto (1994). With support from Fernando Colomo, she made her first feature film as director: Hola, ¿estás sola? (Hi, are you alone? in English) (1995), a story about two young girls who dream of finding an earthly paradise and undertake a long trip towards the sea. Her second feature film was Flores de otro mundo (Flowers from another world in English) (1999), which she co-wrote with Julio Llamazares. It is the story of three women who travel to rural Spain with the hopes of finding love. Her film Te Doy Mis Ojos (Take My Eyes) (2003) won seven Goya Awards, including Best Film and Best Director. In January 2011, the film made the final nine shortlist. A film within a film, it is set in the Bolivian highlands in 2000. A Spanish film company's work on Columbus' arrival in the New World gets caught up in local violence related to current exploitation of peasants. It stars Gael García Bernal as the director and Luis Tosar as the film producer. Carlos Aduviri, an Aymara who plays a native leader in the "film," takes the lead in organizing a resistance to water privatization; he was nominated for a Best Newcomer Award at the Goya Awards. In 2020, she was invited to membership in the AMPAS.

Representative films Flowers from Another World (Flores de otro mundo) (1999) This movie can also be seen as a means of instruction for foreign students. It shows several key aspects of both the history of Spain and the socio-cultural evolution of the country. It tells the story of three women, Milady, from Cuba, Patricia, from the Dominican Republic and Marirrosi, from Bilbao. They have several existential problems and concerns regarding their future. These problems are similar to those suffered by three young men from Santa Eulalia, a village from the Province of Guadalajara, which is an unimportant small town without marriageable women. Damian, Alfonso and Carmelo (these young men) come into contact with the three women at a party organized by single people of the village. There they got to know each other and this gives place to a bittersweet story.

This cinematographic work is useful from an academic point of view, not only for its historical value, but also because it is presented as an open window that allows the viewer to take the place of the characters, suffering with them the same surprises and impressions, since the point of arrival of the women to Santa Eulalia. Other essential aspects of the film are that it offers the opportunity to understand one of the main points of the novel: the problems of the Spanish countryside. At the same time, Icíar Bollaín preserves the classic stereotypes of the typical Spanish town, where the bar is the most important forum for meetings and ideological defenses. But Bollaín doesn't leave behind the important issue of the leading sexism of the time, and she is also concerned to mitigate it largely by introducing characters like Doña Gregoria, who is the mother of one of the young men and also the reflection of the rural matriarchy.

Foreignness is another key point in this story. At the beginning of the film, with the arrival of the three women to the village, the feeling of strangeness and rejection towards the foreigners appears. However it starts disappearing with the development of loving relationships between them and the young men of Santa Eulalia. This is a clear solution to the problem of foreignness. Icíar Bollaín doesn't present a problem without the corresponding solution, introducing an integrative ideology that breaks with cultural and racial barriers, which is another important pillar of the film that is a recognized pedagogical intention.

Bollaín sets the film during the Spanish property bubble to reflect the issues and consequences that even today directly affect Spanish society. Flowers from Another World analyses not only the racial issue but also the role of women at that time. This can even be compared to other similar cases in which women start a movement for social integration, as in the case of the Mexican immigrant women in the United States. Everything is portrayed through the figures of the three women who star in this story.

Take my eyes (Te doy mis ojos) (2003) Source: The couple live in Edinburgh with their three children.

In September 2025, she signed an open pledge with Film Workers for Palestine pledging not to work with Israeli film institutions "that are implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people."

Filmography As director

As actress

Music videos

Awards Grand Prix awardFlowers from Another World