La Bola Negra

Cannes Best Director winners Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo weave an unfinished Federico García Lorca play into a sweeping queer epic celebrating the lovers Spain’s past left out.

In 1937, a rural Spanish village loyal to the Nationalist rebels prepares to welcome its Italian allies. Sebastián waits with the marching band, but when the planes arrive overhead, they open fire on the crowd. He barely escapes, only to be conscripted into the fascist army.

Five years earlier, Carlos drowns his sorrows after his father’s exclusive social club turns him away over rumours about his sexuality. In 2017, gay writer and historian Alberto inherits a mysterious manuscript from his estranged grandfather.

Moving back and forth through time, these three stories intersect in an epic tribute to the lives history left out.

Curator’s note

Winning Best Director at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, filmmaking due Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo (who go by the creative moniker Los Javis) have created a spellbinding gay epic that audaciously uses an unfinished play by murdered gay poet and playwright Federica García Lorca as it’s inciting rally cry.

Passionate, defiant and visually dazzling, La Bola Negra gives queer history the grand cinematic treatment it has long deserved, with Penélope Cruz delivering a brief but electrifying performance as a bawdy nightclub singer.