Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, Los Javis, have achieved the award for best direction at the 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival for La bola negra, their new film and one of the great Spanish bets in the official competition.
The award, granted ex aequo with Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski for Fatherland, places the Spanish creators on a new international dimension. La bola negra competed in the official section of the French festival, which also featured titles by Pedro Almodóvar, Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Asghar Farhadi, Hirokazu Koreeda, and Ryusuke Hamaguchi.
The victory represents a symbolic leap for Los Javis, who go from being one of the great phenomena of recent Spanish audiovisual culture to entering the list of winners at one of the most influential festivals in the world.
‘La bola negra’, a film about Lorca, desire, and memory
La bola negra is a drama constructed in three distinct periods: 1932, 1937, and 2017. The film weaves these eras through the shadow of Federico García Lorca, historical memory, and homosexuality in Spain during the last century.
The film takes the Lorquian universe as its starting point and a central wound: the way Lorca's desires, loves, and identity were silenced for decades. Los Javis have argued in Cannes that the poet's work cannot be separated from his intimate life, nor can the queer dimension of his legacy be erased.
That approach makes La bola negra one of their most ambitious works: not only because of its narrative scale, but also because of the emotional and political territory it treads. It is cinema about the past, yes, but also about the present: about what is remembered, what is hidden, and who has the right to tell a story.
Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close, two international names in the cast
The film features two presences of enormous international weight: Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close. Cruz plays the cuplet singer Nené Romero, while Close embodies a Hispanist linked to Lorca's memory.
The cast has been one of the elements that has generated the most attention in Cannes, where La bola negra arrived preceded by strong expectations for Los Javis' leap to a major international film production.
RTVE had already highlighted before the awards ceremony that the film had been well-received in Cannes and that Ambrossi and Calvo's proposal vindicated sexual freedom and historical memory through the figure of Federico García Lorca.
Netflix buys the film for the United States
The recognition at Cannes arrives on the same day that La bola negra has been acquired by Netflix for distribution in the United States, according to available information. This move strengthens the film's international projection and opens a new chapter for its journey outside of Spain.
In the Spanish market, the film is scheduled to premiere on October 2nd. The combination of an award at Cannes, an international cast, Lorca as a cultural axis, and foreign distribution places the film in a very strong position for the cinematic conversation in the coming months.
The film had already generated international interest before the jury's decision. Several specialized media outlets had placed it among the most talked-about Spanish titles at the festival, highlighting its formal and thematic ambition.
An Award with Spanish Resonance: The Almodóvar Precedent
The award for best director at Cannes carries special significance for Spanish cinema. Pedro Almodóvar also received that same recognition for Todo sobre mi madre in 1999, an unavoidable reference for a generation of creators who have grown up under his influence.
Los Javis have never hidden their admiration for Almodóvar, and the Cannes award connects their trajectory with a tradition of Spanish cinema marked by desire, identity, family memory, sexual freedom, and popular culture.
The difference lies in the language. Ambrossi and Calvo arrive at Cannes after having built their own voice through musical theater, television, auteur series, and the cultural phenomenon of La Mesías. La bola negra confirms that this voice can also operate in the grand festival cinema.
From Generational Phenomenon to International Authors
The award at Cannes changes the position of Los Javis. Until now, their career had been associated with popular success, generational impact, and a highly recognizable way of interpreting Spanish culture through emotion, religion, trauma, humor, and identity.
With La bola negra, that universe enters fully into the most demanding circuit of international cinema. The film does not arrive as a rarity or a whim of television authors, but as a work recognized for its direction at the world's leading film festival.
The leap is important because it validates a trajectory that had already broken borders between formats: theater, television, platforms, music, religious iconography, pop culture, and collective memory. Cannes now adds a first-rate cinematographic legitimization to them.