“La bola negra”, interview with directors Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo

After Cannes 2026, La bola negra by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi arrives at the 21st Rome Film Fest as Spain’s candidate in the Oscar race. The film tells the interconnected stories of three men in three different eras, three lives intimately linked by sexuality and desire, pain and inheritance, and by one of Federico García Lorca’s last, unfinished works. The directors talk about the decision not to deny oneself that lies at the heart of the film, their tribute to what Lorca wanted to write, the stories of the LGBTQ+ elders that inspired one of the timelines, and a film that starts as a queer movie and ends up speaking to everyone. The film will be released in Italian cinemas by Movies Inspired from January 14th, 2027

A film about a decision

The film, they say at one point that La Bola Negra, the unfinished work by Federico García Lorca, is a work about a decision. Is the film also about that? Javier Ambrossi nods and say: “We investigated and understood that La bola negra, the unfinished work by Federico García Lorca, was also going to be about a decision. He wanted to write a play about being explicit about yourself, and that’s why the movie is all about that, to pay tribute to what Federico wanted to write, in our opinion and from what we researched.” The whole film, he explains, can be found in a single moment: “When the character of Carlos goes to the casino and he’s asked ‘Are you gay?’, that silence before the answer, to me, is the movie. Sometimes yes or no is very important. I don’t know if everyone understands how important that could be, it could be life changing, and that’s what we wanted to portray.”

To speak or to die

For Javier Calvo, the choice between denying oneself or not runs through every era of the story: “The decision of denying yourself or not is key in all the timelines. Denying yourself or, like in Call Me by Your Name, is it better to speak or to die? And when he says no, what happens is a big revolution inside.” The three storylines, he explains, were born from the need to look back: “We wanted to have three storylines in order to talk about how much the past informs the present, and because in the LGBTQ+ community the rights that we have now are based on a lot of suffering, silence, deaths, fight. I don’t think we pay tribute enough to the people that came before us. I think we kind of forgot them.”

The stories of the elders

As Javier Calvo explains, one of the timelines grew out of the directors’ work with the Fundación 26 de Diciembre, which takes care of elderly LGBTQ+ people who no longer have a home, who have been widowed or who live on the street: “Hearing their stories is what motivated us to create this timeline. There are many, many people in the LGBTQ+ community that have incredible stories. Stories about love, about passion, but also about impossible love: a lover that dies, and you are forever alone because your family turned against you.” Those encounters changed his perspective: “Every single person that we met there made me understand that I don’t look back enough at my elders. My parents, yes, but the elders of my community? Not at all. And it was important for us to see each one of them and understand that their personal story matters.”

Connected through time and space

For Javier Ambrossi, alongside the value of each individual story, the film wants to show what binds all of them together: “We wanted to do both things, to say everyone’s story matters, but at the same time that we are all connected. That’s the three storylines at the end. You should feel: oh my God, we are connected through time and space. We share the same fear, the same will to live, the same will to be loved. In the end, all human beings are very similar.” That is why, he says, La bola negra “starts like a queer movie, but in the middle you forget about that”: “Hopefully you’ll be like: okay, maybe I don’t understand them, maybe I’m not like them, but this is me, I felt the same need to love.”

Plot