Cannes Review: La Bola Negra Feels Like an Epic, Long-Lost Novel

If 19th- and 20th-century storytelling was defined by grandiose literature, the 21st is all about cinema. We read less and watch more; consequently, films have become a substitute for sweeping stories that weave various timelines and protagonists. The latest in such regard is Cannes revelation La Bola Negra (aka The Black Ball), a truly ambitious project—inspired by historical truth while remaining a fictional, highly personal undertaking.

The Spanish drama, directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (also known as Los Javis), follows three men whose fates are bound by a search for identity, sexuality, and love. In 1932, young Carlos (Milo Quifes) fights for his place in Spanish society. In 1937, 25-year-old Sebastián (Spanish phenomenon Guitarricadelafuente), driven by the desire to survive, finds himself amidst the Spanish Civil War and falls in love with the mysterious Rafael (Miguel Bernardeau). In 2017, Alberto (Carlos González), a historian and lost soul, confronts his late grandfather’s legacy after receiving a strange manuscript.

This plot is inspired by Federico García Lorca’s unfinished play from which La Bola Negra takes its peculiar title. Per the voting process in 1930s Spain, receiving black balls (instead of white ones) meant the rejection of a man from a “Casino”—a prestigious social club—due to his sexual orientation. Before being brutally murdered, the Spanish poet managed to write only four pages of the play. Yet, thanks to the directors, Lorca’s manuscript is now extended by cinematic pages, Calvo and Ambrossi assembling their own version of truth by using the past and reinventing it. Within this framework, La Bola Negra blends fictional and historical characters with the appalling terror of the civil conflict (taking place between 1936 and 1939) and more peaceful times (the modern storyline set in 2017), when being queer is no longer considered a threat.

Seemingly, the only connection between these stories is the characters’ evident queerness, which can be spotted in the way they look at other men, how they fall in love, or how they become victims of the loneliness that accompanies it (especially in the two narratives taking place in conservative 1930s Spain). Just like the eponymous play, this epic and robust drama is—to quote Glenn Close’s character, who plays a scholar invested in Lorca’s work—about choice. A queer choice, to be more precise.

There are myriad themes tackled by this giant of a film: the inevitable judgment one faces when deciding to come out (Carlos); the sense of an ending for queer bohemia after the rise of the Falange (both Carlos and Sebastián); the generational family trauma inherited whether you like it or not (Alberto); and the act of revealing one’s true identity (everyone).

The latter is echoed in another memorable cameo: a performative act from the one and only Penélope Cruz. As Nené Romero, a fictionalized performer, she enlightens the audience with her timeless élan. She and Sebastián have a poignant conversation about the act of pretense: Romero mentions she has a friend who can pretend to be anyone, even Raquel Meller (a famous Spanish diseuse and performer of the era). The main character’s queerness is not bluntly confronted—it exists beneath the facade of a brave soldier—but Romero understands everything; she saw it in the very first spark in his eyes during her performance. It is the “drag” he seeks: in a room full of lascivious men, Sebastián is the only one who does not treat her as a sexual object. “Transvestism is the fantasy of possibility. War is the opposite,” she explains to him. This sequence, like many others, allows nuance to rise to the surface. In La Bola Negra, everything is spoken between the lines or through poetic allegories.

The film also joins a lineage of contemporary cinema that aspires to novelistic storytelling through audiovisual means. Last year’s Sound of Falling had a similar premise, echoing influential modernist writers like Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner to create a provocative stream of consciousness through images rather than literature. Here, the “cinema of attractions” resembles the style of Mario Vargas Llosa’s 1969 novel Conversation in the Cathedral, each sequence adding another layer of meaning to the equation. It is for the spectator to decide when and how they will decode this impressive jigsaw.

That effect, indeed affecting, is bolstered by Raül Refree’s non-diegetic, orchestral score, which makes frequent use of Spanish guitars and trumpets. This musical element aids La Bola Negra‘s ethos by reminding one that love and passion should never be forgotten, even if buried under the debris of war or the passage of time. It evokes nostalgia for a past that may be long gone, but can nonetheless be reclaimed through cinema.

“Isn’t it funny that the only story you don’t care about is yours?” Alberto’s partner asks at one point. This can be read dually. It is true: we learn that Alberto escapes from his own past—a strenuous relationship with his mother and the fact that he never met his grandfather—by losing himself in the stories of others. This is supposedly why he decided to become a historian and writer. But the same can be said about the audience, which often runs from painful reconciliations for the sake of onscreen entertainment. La Bola Negra makes us realize it is time to confront our own lives, no matter the consequences. We can all lose ourselves at the movies, but it is life and the “human being who matters most,” as the prominent Polish novelist Wiesław Myśliwski would put it.

Throughout a monumental 155-minute runtime, cinematographer Gris Jordana’s camera tracks our heroes like an old lover seeking to reconcile. It is as near their bodies as a lover’s hands during an intimate encounter—the close-ups are like palms that caress and soothe. Carlos and Sebastián might be echoes of the past, but La Bola Negra, with a little help from Alberto, rescues them from being obliterated by misfortune and the unreliability of memory. It is a vital gift that only cinema, through the act of imitation and visualization, can bestow upon us. These characters stay alive within the moment and within us, exuding a life-affirming quality akin to García Lorca’s lines so often uttered in this sensational film.

La Bola Negra premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival and will be released by Netflix.