Spain’s 2026 Oscar contender passionately reconciles with the legacy of the Civil War
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Oscar-tipped queer Spanish epic La Bola Negra, winner of the Best Director award at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, epitomises more than just spirited, flamboyant filmmaking. It also augurs a shift toward a new generation of young Spanish filmmakers grappling with the horrendous legacy of the country’s Civil War. It’s hardly a coincidence that La Bola Negra’s directorial duo of Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo were born in the wake of General Franco’s death, in 1984 and 1991, respectively. Perhaps this gives them a sense of pragmatic, ruminative distance from the decades-spanning shockwaves of the conflict, while also emboldening them to excavate and contextualise the past in a way that previous generations of filmmakers found too painful (or were maybe blackballed for doing so).
It also can’t be a coincidence that one of the film’s executive producers is Iberian leading light Pedro Almodovar, who has never been shy about contextualising Spain’s traumatic past (see the recent Parallel Mothers from 2022), and whose bold technical approach clearly influences here. As an extended metaphor for generational pain and the need to confront and reconcile with nationwide tragedy, La Bola Negra is a striking and impassioned, if somewhat unwieldy, achievement. It folds multiple narratives in on each other like a Russian nesting doll, steadily unfurling how, butterfly effect-style, ramifications can seep down through the years to inspire anguish and also unexpected notes of redemption. For all the film’s heart-in-the-throat pain, both personal and political, there is also an underlying sense of magnanimity that will surely click with audiences.
The film is a narrative triptych (with offshoots here and there), encompassing early Civil War horror with a modern-day narrative of reluctant mother-son redemption. In 1937, we are presented with the appalling bombing of a northern Spanish village by the Franco-supported Italian air force, at which time Republican rebel Sebastián Azcuna (Guitarricadelafuente) is the only survivor out of his whole family. He convinces the Francoist Nationalists that he is one of them and is subsequently enlisted and later enrolled to keep guard at a military hospital.
Sebastián’s loyalties become more compromised when he makes a connection with the hospital-bound Republican Rafael Rodríguez Rapún (Miguel Bernardeau), who shares an important history with a key Spanish literary figure, and who eventually entrusts Sebastián with an important task. Intercut with this staging are scenes from 1932 Granada in which wealthy queer man Carlos Rodríguez Segura (Milo Quifes) is repeatedly denied exclusive admission to a local casino owing to his homosexuality, yielding the ‘black ball’ imagery of the film’s title. On top of this is the contemporary narrative, set in 2017, in which queer playwright turned historian Alberto López Azcuna (Carlos González) is informed of a maternal inheritance that has the potential to unearth skeletons, bridge generations and answer long-held questions. The difficulty resides in the relationship with his embittered mother Teresa (Lola Dueñas), who seethes at the memories of being abandoned by her father, Alberto’s grandfather.
It’s a heady brew and the film’s episodic structure doesn’t always flow that successfully, often building up a head of steam in one timeline and then compromising the dramatic tension by abruptly launching into another. The symbolic connections are laudable and powerful, from colours to family members, letters to locations, but the execution is somewhat misshapen. That said, the staging of the Civil War sequences and their aftermath is suitably harrowing, even if there are digressions in both the 1930s and noughties timelines that don’t add up to much (Penelope Cruz and Glenn Close, welcome presences on their own terms, feel like distractions from the central Spanish ensemble who do terrific heavy lifting).
On a cinematic basis, the film is a thing of wonder, from Gris Jordana’s expert use of wides and masters, particularly in the ironically gilded Granada sequences, to the multifaceted use of music. The film interweaves diegetic song and ex-diegetic score to fashion a full-blooded salute to Spanish identity, including two Penelope Cruz-performed burlesques and a surrealistic taberna interlude that seamlessly captures a sense of emotional stagnation. More impressive is Raül Refree, which not only has to contend with the needle drop songs but also fashion a coherent musical narrative across 70 years of history. Refree succeeds admirably, mixing elements of flamenco and jazz with solemn bugalistic laments, a tapestry as complex as the editing.
Despite its overall messiness, the film by some miracle starts to pull itself together around the three-quarters mark. It’s here that La Bola Negra reveals itself as a slow-burn lament for a country that has been lost and is never destined to be recovered, but that’s not to say that people shouldn’t build a testament to such pain. A gunshot is as painful as a lingering memory, and people who are separated across time are revealed to have a sanguinary link that allows for both tears and healing in equal measure. \
All of the individual characters are revealed to carry wounds, and yet they are ultimately symbolic representatives of the country’s wider national wound. The interweaving of Spanish literary history is also tastefully done and unearths one of the Civil War’s most appalling assaults on cultural identity, and yet an acknowledgment of the assault might well allow the ghosts of the past to rest. The film is arguably more successful than the aforementioned Parallel Mothers in drawing its various threads together, and its ultimately optimistic outlook hopefully points to a new horizon for Spanish cinema.
Rating: 4/5
Sean Wilson is a Film Critic based in Bristol, UK. If you enjoyed his review, please consider supporting him by subscribing to his substack or by purchasing his book The Sound of Cinema
