A film built on a play Federico García Lorca never finished.
Los Javis’ second feature (2026) borrows its title from Lorca’s unfinished La bola negra and braids three men across three eras: Granada in 1932 (the story of the play itself), the Civil War in 1937, and a historian in 2017 who finds out his unknown grandfather has just died. Desire, pain and inheritance, passed down like furniture nobody asked for.
Inside the 1937 thread lives a real story: Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, Lorca’s last love, who went to the front after Lorca was murdered and died a year later. In the film, the boys taken along with him are known as “los de Reinosa”, after the place they were taken to.
Spot the cameo: Alana S. Portero shares a scene with Glenn Close. (Penélope Cruz, Lola Dueñas and Guitarricadelafuente, in his acting debut, are also in.)
And it has a line that stuck with me, collected as La fantasía de la posibilidad:
La bola negra
El transformismo es la fantasía de la posibilidad… Y la guerra, todo lo contrario.
Best Director at Cannes 2026 (shared with Pawlikowski) and Spain’s pick for the Oscars. Worth it.