Three men, three eras and three lives linked by love, desire and the struggle to live out their homosexuality freely. Whilst Spanish society undergoes radical change, the consequences of oppression, forbidden desires and unresolved grief continue to reverberate from one generation to the next. The three stories intertwine to form a compelling, romantic and poetic portrait of loves that history would rather have erased.

With La Bola Negra, Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo – better known as Los Javis – present an ambitious queer epic inspired by one of Federico García Lorca’s last unfinished works. The Spanish poet and playwright, who was murdered in 1936 at the start of the Spanish Civil War, left behind just four pages of his novel La bola negra. The title refers to the social exclusion of a gay character. Ninety years later, Los Javis draw on this fragment to tell a much broader story about Spanish queer history.

The directing duo, who have been campaigning for years to raise the profile of the LGBTQIA+ community in Spanish culture, interweave Lorca’s literary legacy with a play by co-screenwriter Alberto Conejero. Shot on 35mm, La Bola Negra combines the lavish visual style and intense emotions of classic melodrama with a contemporary perspective on sexuality, identity and generational trauma. The three time periods mirror one another, ensuring that the past continually influences the present.

With this magnificent and moving love epic, Los Javis give a voice to generations of men whose desires and lives were long kept hidden. A film that not only lays bare the pain of the past, but also celebrates the freedom to love. At the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo were awarded the prize for Best Director, which they shared with Paweł Pawlikowski (Fatherland).