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.

[7] 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).

Her second feature film was Flores de otro mundo (Flowers from another world in English) (1999), which she co-wrote with Julio Llamazares.

[4] Starring Luis Tosar and Laia Marull, the movie is about a man's abuse of his wife during their marriage, and their struggles to change the pattern of their lives.

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.

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.

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.

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.

While the painting does not carry a major role in the story of Pilar, a victim of domestic violence, it is crucial to the development of the main character.

What Icíar Bollaín tries to represent using a historiographical discourse and filmic fiction, is the intersectionality between the European conquest and colonialism of 1492, the rise of neoliberalism in impoverished nations in the late 20th and early 21st century (in Bolivia the privatization of public resources, like water).

However, by the end of the film, the director realizes his mistake and in a moment of compassion, and at the risk of his own life, saves the daughter of his star actor.