La Bola Negra review: A magnificent gay epic that transcends time

If you grew up in Spain or know your arts, you'll likely know Federico García Lorca.

If not, be seated.

The iconic, Granada-born 20th century poet and playwright — a friend of Salvador Dalí, and a gay man — lived during the Spanish Civil War, a time when political violence was rife and queerness was persecuted.

Lorca began writing the play La Bola Negra in 1936, the first year of the war between Republicans and Franco's fascist Nationalists — and the same year he was murdered by right-wing Nationalists.

And it's this piece of unfinished theatre that lies at the heart of Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi's extraordinary 2026 film, a magnificent epic that draws threads between Lorca's work and the Spanish gay men connected to it.

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With exemplary performances, transfixing cinematography, and a non-linear narrative fuelled by a family mystery, La Bola Negra brings lost pages of queer, literary, and political history to life.

And we won't be forgetting that musical appearance from Penélope Cruz anytime soon, either.

La Bola Negra humanises history, drawing threads from the Spanish Civil War to the present.

A film of three contexts, La Bola Negra connects gay men across time within Spain: Carlos in 1932, Sebastián in 1937, and Alberto in 2017.

Here, Calvo and Ambrossi, with fellow screenwriter Alberto Conejero, run parallel to Mascha Schilinski's Sound of Falling , with both films weaving a complex tapestry of characters across time.

But here, thanks to editor Alberto Gutiérrez, these men's stories are directly connected, and it's the puzzle of the film to bring them together.

We first meet Sebastián (an exceptional debut from Álvaro Lafuente Calvo, aka musician Guitarricadelafuente), who is forced into the Nationalist army.

We meet this gentle trumpet player in a shocking opening scene in which his northern Spanish village in Cantabria is destroyed by Italian forces.