La Bola Negra

Sharing the Best Director Prize at Cannes, this sublime time-hopping triptych recounts three men’s experiences of love, legacy and the unending fight for queer liberation.

In 1937, musician Sebastián is conscripted into the Spanish Civil War by the pro-Franco army; there, he meets and falls for a handsome leftist prisoner. In 1932, Carlos attempts to gain membership to an exclusive casino but is rejected due to rumours about his homosexuality. And in 2017, historian Alberto inherits a gift from his estranged grandfather that exacerbates tensions with his mother. Across the decades, these men’s stories interweave and bleed into one another, revealing threads that connect them in profound, unexpected ways.

Associate-produced by Pedro Almodóvar (Bitter Christmas, MIFF 2026) and featuring supporting turns by Penélope Cruz, Glenn Close and Julio Torres (Problemista, MIFF 2024), the arrestingly poetic second feature from directorial duo Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo depicts how each generation faces its own forms of prejudice. Yet as much as it lays bare the present’s debts to the past, the film also challenges our notions of linear time, its dazzling collisions of image and sound coming together as palimpsests of personal and societal memory. Inspired by Federico García Lorca’s unfinished stageplay of the same name, La Bola Negra is a sweeping meditation on the battles we wage for ideology and belonging.

Content: Melbourne International Film Festival