Review of 'La Bola Negra': A Monument to Gay Storytellers of the Los Javis Era Is a Heartbreaking Work by an Astonishing Genius

Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrosi blend real and fictional figures in this Lorca-inspired poem for love stories buried by Spanish history.

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Editor's note: This review was originally published on May 21, 2026 from the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. Netflix will open the film in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, October 16, then go wider before coming to Netflix on Friday, December 2.

While it's technically accurate to say that Labula Negra is a feature film from Spanish creative duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrosi (collectively Los Javis), it's more accurate to say that they've made four films and magically rolled them into one. It's nearly impossible to fathom the structural effort required to fluidly create a fully cohesive story using three narratives told in three timelines, each with a distinct visual identity. RELATED STORIES Why an indie producer refuses to let his latest film disappear in the air Brian Duffield makes realistic film about surviving a sperm whale

"La Bola Negra" includes a neorealist story of a young man seeking membership in a casino in 1932, a tragic wartime romance in 1937 and a lo-fi drama about a historian that made him examine it all in 2017. The fourth element, which serves as the connective tissue for everything, is a timeless poetic expression of love for all the strange storytellers who died before they could truly live.

An unfinished play, "La Bola Negra" by the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, is the basis for themes explored in all timelines. Lorca was assassinated in 1936 by right-wing militias amid rising nationalism that led to the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1936. In an extraordinary move, Los Javis collaborates with Lorca's spirit to finalize this play, imbuing it with details, moods and lyrics from his life and work. The selected lines of his poem "Love sleeps in the poet's breast" act as thunderbolts in the collapsing of time, reviving lost souls as they are briefly and vividly here.

In this "La Bola Negra" remake, it's 1932, and 20-year-old Carlos (Milo Koifs) is under pressure from his father to be accepted as a member of their local casino. The meaning of La Bola Negra/The Black Ball is immediately explained as the strict gay elders vote for his acceptance with a white ball for "yes" or a black ball for "no". You can probably guess how this vote will go.

Los Javis, with the help of sound editors Alejandro Lopez and Anna Harrington, use sound design as part of their integrated editing toolkit. The clack, clack, and sound of black balls landing plays over a 1937 image of an open-top medical vehicle carrying corpses. The second story is based on Alberto Conijero's La Piedra Obscura (2023), a play that reimagines history. Give a different ending to Lorca's lover, Rafael Rodríguez Rapon, a former Atlético Madrid player who fought and died as a republican in the 1937 Battle of Santander - capital of Cantabria (this will be important). Conejero has a screenwriting credit with Les Javis on this quirky version of his play.

The 1937 episode contains a tortured impossible love story for the ages, while also being the most mischievous depiction of military life since Claire Denis's Beau Travail. In his first film role, Spanish pop star Guitarricadelafuente plays Sebastian, a young trumpeter whose family is destroyed when the Italians bomb his village. Offered a choice between death and nationalism, he accepts the gun strapped to him. When a wounded Rafael (Miguel Bernardo) is captured by the enemy in a military hospital, it is Sebastian's duty to guard him.

Brave, principled, tragic, and wonderfully hot, Raphael is the Platonic ideal of a romantic hero, meaning that Sebastian, already out of his depth, now also has to deal with an intoxicating crush. When a nurse tells him to towel off the naked Rafael, his eyes nearly pop out of his head. The juxtaposition of sexual imagery and violence is never more felt than when Rafael becomes enraged, his wound bleeding through his bandages.

The real Raphael was described as a Greek statue, and Sebastian's meeting with this flesh-and-blood statue was depicted in an extraordinary image shortly after him. He loses his family in the bombing. Confused and terrified, he runs around until somehow he finds himself crawling over a pile of rubble on top of which lies a Greek marble statue. Les Javis conveys intense emotions of love, loss, fear, and regret in compositions that make us pause with character. Later, while Rafael is being beaten, in a moment of extreme anxiety, Sebastian runs into the bathroom to play his trumpet (not just a pun). With Lorca's guidance, Los Javis takes poetic license to create magical peaks in the landscape of political realism.

Alberto (Carlos González), the Madrid hero of the 2017 storyline, operates in a recognizable and rooted sphere. A historian with a special interest in queer music from 1920s Constantinople, his days are a low-risk research subject, a regular Grindr user, hanging with his partner Javier (Julio Torres) and managing his explosive mother (Lola Duenas). The catalyst that connects him to Sebastian, Rafael, Carlos and others. The news that the grandfather he had never met died and left him something special, if only he would travel to Cantabria to collect it. Initially impatient with the whole proposition—which mirrors Los Javis's path in making the film—Alberto is drawn into a fascinated connection with the history that brought him here.

Each of these three stories is superbly crafted on its own terms, and the trilogy becomes stunning at times. The rhymes begin to set in a cohesive fourth layer. The script is either perfect or very close to it, with a subtle structure that ensures each episode in a timeline reinforces its neighbors over the others, both narratively and thematically.

Crystalline dialogue sparkles, whether by a poet, a fascist or Penelope Cruz channeling drag queen energy to entertain the nationalist forces as a Vera Lynn-type singer. As the wig-wearing platinum blonde granny walks into a room of roaring soldiers dressed sexily in tanks, her sympathies secretly lie elsewhere. The moment Nene sees Sebastian in her audience, she feels something different about him and says things like “transvestism is a possibility. War is against it.

Wherever possible, without interrupting character movements and narrative arcs, Los Javis lifts the mood with a nod to the whimsical joy and freedom of expression of the only life force that is truly yours. Music, dance, poetry, and even a want-not-see-what-you-want look provides moments of release for repressed characters. A tormented Carlos is briefly himself as he dances flamenco. Sebastian and Rafael transcend their doomed love through lines of poetry. Who else could it be, when those lines are there, you'll never know how much I love you, because you're sleeping in me

Les Javis takes this culturally respectful perspective to honor his collaboration with Pedro Almodóvar (his co-headliner Bitter Christmas includes a very funny short film of them) with a fabulous little gag. Meanwhile, Glenn Close will appear in 2017 to play Isabelle Durand, an American academic who has devoted her life to Lorca research and is publishing a volume called Federica El Poto Gay. The joy of experiencing all the narrative threads coming together is only tempered by the fear of emotional continuity.

All these moving parts are arranged to play like an unbroken piece of music. In the final climax, time is like an illusion and the story of our dead belongs to today.

The film La Bola Negra was screened at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival.