Creative, and former romantic, partners Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (affectionately known as Los Javis), who you’ll recognise from the judging panel if you’ve seen Drag Race España, proved how deftly and affectingly they could navigate multiple timelines and narrative threads with their exceptional 2020 miniseries Veneno starring Lola Rodríguez. It stands among the finest pieces of television ever made, LGBTQ+ or otherwise, and set expectations high for their sophomore feature, La Bola Negra, which world premiered at Cannes and received its Canadian premiere at TIFF 2026. Thankfully it not only met but exceeded those expectations, with Los Javis delivering an exquisite and urgently timely work of art. Nominated for the Palm D’Or and Queer Palm, it went on to win the Best Director award at Cannes and took TIFF’s buzzy People’s Choice Award, seen as an indictor of Academy Awards success. The film is now Spain’s official Oscars submission for the Best International Feature category.
Continuing her collaboration with Los Javis, following La Mesías and Veneno, cinematographer Gris Jordana creates a ravishing look for the film and establishes a bold and enticing visual language, aided by fine work by production designer Roger Bellés and costume designer Ana López Cobos, that immerses the viewer in three distinct time periods.
There is a heightened feel to the 1932 pre-war setting—with fleeting tableaux of impossibly handsome sailors evoking Fassbinder’s Querelle—where we meet young Carlos (a captivating Milo Quifes making an impressive screen acting debut). He is encouraged by his austere father to join an exclusive Granada casino where he is black balled by the membership committee due to rumours that he is gay, and left facing a stark choice of denying or confirming their suspensions. In 1937, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War, trumpet player Sebastián (Guitarricadelafuente) finds himself in General Franco’s fascist Nationalist army following a devastating friendly fire attack on his village from Italian allies, where he climbs upon a fallen statue of Saint Sebastian amidst the rubble of a bombed out church. The scene is of the film’s many striking and indelible images, rich with symbolism. Before long Sebastián is charged with guarding and befriending an injured prisoner of war, footballer and actor Rafael (Miguel Bernardeau), and is left watching over his hospital bed where he gazes at his chiseled injured body. In 2017, frustrated playwright and historian Alberto (a delightful Carlos González, both brooding and amusingly chaotic) cruises on Grindr and FaceTimes his boyfriend Juan Pablo (Julio Torres) as he takes a break from his research into queer references in Spanish songs from the 1920s while navigating a challenging relationship with his erratic mother, Teresa (a terrific Lola Dueñas).
Editor Alberto Gutiérrez—also reuniting with the directors after La Mesías and Veneno—builds an intriguing, intoxicating flow as Los Javis masterfully weave these narratives with verve, humour, and heart. After Alberto unexpectedly inherits the missing pages of a believed to be unfinished explicitly gay-themed play by lauded queer poet Federico García Lorca (who was assassinated in 1936), from a grandfather he didn’t know was still living, he encounters Isabelle (Glenn Close), a visiting American Lorca academic. It is a pivotal scene where the connection between the disparate characters separated by time and place whom we have been following comes into sudden, deeply poignant focus, which is beautifully built upon throughout the rest of the film.
Close, who learned some Spanish for the role, is transcendent and makes a lasting impact in just a few minutes of screen time. The character’s motivation for uncovering queer literary history is especially touching. While in the 1937 segment, a radiant Penélope Cruz’s enthralling turn as a beloved Madrid cupletista, Nené Romero, entertaining the Nationalist troops, is another standout. Briefly alone with Sebastián, Nené shares a story about a trans friend she has lost, underscoring the freedom she represented by living her life authentically while war, and fascism, are the opposite of that. They are words that resonate with today’s rightward march in many countries, including our own, led by an administration intent on eradicating trans people. It gets to the crux of why LGBTQ+ embracing their true selves are so feared by authoritarians and their acolytes who thrive on repressing their citizens.
Since its Cannes premiere, La Bola Negra has often been referred to as “sweeping” and “grand”, and yet while it is certainly epic in scope, charged with beautifully poetic expressionist sequences, its power is in its subtlety and intimacy. It is its smaller moments that prove to be the profoundly affecting ones, particularly between Sebastián and Rafael who are forced to hide and not act upon their love. So much is expressed about their connection in the detail of their legs pressing against each other as they are transported to an impossibly painful situation only war can fathom. Guitarricadelafuente gives a nuanced and compelling performance as the increasingly conflicted Sebastián and his chemistry with the soulful Miguel Bernardeau is electric. It doesn’t hurt that both men are drop-dead gorgeous. In the war epics I grew up with they would be playing straight characters, in 2026 it is no less powerful to encounter a film of this scale that centres its queer characters in a deeply moving and profound uncovering of queer history, personal and cultural. It is a vibrant, loving tribute to Lorca’s life and works and to our queer ancestors more generally, as well as a rallying call to live boldly and defiantly today in their honour, despite those loud ugly voices who would like us to hide.
By James Kleinmann
La Bola Negra received its Canadian premiere at TIFF 2026 and opens theatrically on October 16th, 2026 in Los Angeles (AMC Century City, AMC Burbank) and New York (Angelika Film Center, The Paris Theater). Tickets are on-sale now. Launches on Netflix in the US and Canada on December 2nd, 2026.
La Bola Negra is the opening night selection of NewFest 2026 on October 15th.
Watch the official trailer below:
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