Oscars: Spain Selects ‘La Bola Negra’ for International Features Race

“La Bola Negra,” Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s Cannes Festival sensation, is Spain’s submission for the 2027 international feature film Academy Award.

Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s “The Beloved, ”starring Javier Bardem, and Alauda Ruix de Azua’s Goya and San Sebastián winner “Sundays” also figured in Spain’s international feature shortlist, arguably the strongest in Spanish history.

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Any other Oscar entry choice from Spain than “La Bola Negra,” announced Wednesday by Alejandro Amenábar on behalf of Spain’s Academia de Cine, would have been a huge shock.

World premiering in Cannes main competition, “La Bola Negra” first caught attention by scoring a 16 minute standing ovation at its world premiere on the Croisette. It caused a further splash winning best director, shared with Paweł Pawlikowski for “Fatherland.”

Picked up by Netflix for the U.S. and later Canada, “La Bola Negra” again moved waves when Netflix announced that it would open the feature theatrically on Oct. 16, setting a 47-day U.S. theatrical window the longest form any movie in the streaming giant’s history, a sure indication that the film will feature strongly among the streamer’s awards priorities for the fall.

Though already regarded as one of the frontrunners in the international feature film category, “La Bola Negra” is already being talked up as a candidate for multiple other categories. “La Bola Negra’ has mucho heat,” Variety has asseverated.

Sweeping, unapologetically passionate and hugely ambitious, “La Bola Negra” braids three connected stories, each shot in a different film style, chronicling the travails and legacy of Spain’s gay experience in 1932, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, and 2017. It picks up on the first four pages in an unfinished novel by legendary poet-playwright Federico García Lorca, bludgeoned and shot to death by Franco’s troops in 1936 for being a social activist and homosexual, “un maricón” in the Spanish macho slur.

The film features a feisty turn from Penélope Cruz as a cabaret dancer and a cameo from Glenn Close as a modern-day hispanist, accompanying Spanish stars Miguel Bernardeau, Guitarricadelafuente, Milo Quifes and Carlos Gutiérrez in lead roles.

From the get-go, the Javis set out to make “a super production that is auteur-driven but also very queer,” Ambrossi told Variety before the Cannes world premiere.

Heavily researched, “La Bola Negra” reflects not only the ambitions of Los Javis, as its writer-director are known, but also Movistar Plus, the biggest Spanish pay TV/SVOD operator which produced with Los Javis newly launched Suma Content Films. It is co-produced by Pedro and Agustín Almodovar’s El Deseo and France’s Le Pacte, with the participation of Spanish network Atresmedia. Sales agent Goodfellas has practically sold out the world.

After “lighting up” Telluride, Variety has reported, “La Bola Negra,” the film bowed Tuesday in Toronto. It won the Audience Award at Australia Sydney Festival, will open New York’s LGBTQ+ film festival NewFest on Oct. 15. “La Bola Negra” will have is Spanish premiere at the San Sebastián Festival on Saturday, where it has already sparked a feeding fever for tickets.

The shortlist for the 2027 Oscar nominations will be announced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Dec. 15, with the final selection announced on Jan. 21. The 99th Academy Awards ceremony is scheduled to take place on March 14 in Los Angeles.