La Bola Negra.” Photo: Netflix
Fresh off winning the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival, Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s highly anticipated queer historical epic La Bola Negra (The Black Ball) is currently building momentum across the fall festival circuit.
The 155-minute Spanish drama weaves three distinct timelines—1932, 1937, and 2017—to trace a century of desire, isolation, and historical trauma. Anchored by an ensemble cast that includes Guitarricadelafuente, Milo Quifes, Carlos González, Miguel Bernardeau, Penélope Cruz, and Glenn Close, the film connects a young man blackballed from an elite social club in pre-dictatorship Granada, an unlikely romance between a conscripted soldier and a Republican prisoner during the Spanish Civil War, and a modern-day Madrid historian who unearths long-buried family records.
Following its world premiere at Cannes and screening at the Sydney Film Festival, the film is currently featured on the international festival circuit, making stops at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and the San Sebastián International Film Festival’s ‘Perlak’ slate before heading to Spanish theaters on September 25.
American audiences won’t have to wait long: Netflix acquired North American distribution rights after a fierce post-Cannes bidding war and will give the film a high-profile 47-day theatrical window—its longest since Marriage Story. La Bola Negra arrives in U.S. theaters on October 16, 2026, before streaming globally on Netflix starting December 2, 2026
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