• Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s La Bola Negra earned a 22-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival and is a Palme d’Or contender
• The decades-spanning queer drama weaves together three storylines set in 1932, 1937 and 2017, inspired by the life and work of Federico García Lorca
• Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close appear in key supporting roles alongside three openly gay lead actors
• The film is produced with the backing of Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar’s El Deseo production company
• Los Javis are the most celebrated creative duo in Spain, behind hit series Veneno and the Sundance-acclaimed La Mesías

A 22-minute standing ovation doesn’t lie. When La Bola Negra (The Black Ball) — the long-awaited feature film debut from Spanish directing duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, known collectively as Los Javis — screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, the response was the kind that careers are made of. It’s a sweeping, emotionally gutting, visually audacious queer epic that arrives at the world’s most prestigious film festival like something the cinema has been quietly waiting for.

And if that ovation is any indication, the wait was worth it.

The film weaves together three distinct storylines across three eras — 1937, 1932, and 2017 — with a structural confidence that makes the complexity feel effortless. In 1937, musician-turned-soldier Sebastián (played by singer-songwriter Guitarricadelafuente in his acting debut) survives an aerial attack on his village and is conscripted into the Nationalist fascist army, where he’s assigned to befriend a leftist prisoner named Rafael (Miguel Bernardeau, best known as a breakout from the hit series Elite) in order to extract information. What happens instead is a queer awakening — urgent, dangerous, and impossible to suppress. The film’s opening sequence alone, in which Sebastián climbs through the bodies of the dead using arrows from a felled sculpture as handholds, announces that you are in the hands of filmmakers who understand how to make spectacle feel sacred.

The 1932 timeline — fictional, and the source of the film’s title — follows Carlos (Milo Quifes), a young man whose confidence crumbles when he is blackballed from his father’s casino on the basis of rumors about his homosexuality. The title refers to the casino’s voting process: a white ball means acceptance, a black ball means rejection. That image of internalized shame takes on surreal, snow-drenched form in one of the film’s most striking sequences — a Sisyphean vision of what it means to carry rejection inside your body across a lifetime.

Then there’s 2017, where playwright-turned-record-collector Alberto (Carlos González) receives word that his estranged grandfather has died — a grandfather he thought had been dead for years. When his mother Teresa (Lola Dueñas) reacts to the news with fury and tells him to stay out of the will, Alberto goes anyway. What he finds in a brown envelope becomes the connective tissue of the entire film: a physical and emotional inheritance that links all three stories across nearly a century.

A Love Letter to Federico García Lorca — and to Every Generation That Carried His Pain

At the heart of La Bola Negra is the ghost of Federico García Lorca, the poet and playwright murdered by fascists in 1936, and arguably the most important queer figure in Spanish literary history. The film is partly inspired by Alberto Conejero’s 2015 play La piedra oscura (Dark Stone) and by an unfinished work by Lorca himself, and his presence — his poetry, his fate, his capacity for love — haunts every frame.

“It’s a tribute to him,” Ambrossi said the morning after the premiere, “and I’m sure this makes it very special. When gay people and queer people watch La Bola Negra, I’m sure they’re going to connect and feel the truth.” He added that Lorca “is so modern” and expressed a hope that young audiences who see the film will go to bookstores afterward to discover his work — and to reckon with what happened to him. “He was killed very young by fascists,” Ambrossi said, “and that cannot happen again.”

The film’s central metaphor — the black ball of the title — extends beyond the casino scene into something more elemental. “There’s a physical inheritance in the movie, like the black ball Federico used as a metaphor, of our fear, the shame you have inside,” Calvo explained. “It’s something we feel we’ve inherited as gay men and LGBT people and queer people. There’s this black ball that comes through generations, and there’s something about that connection that talks about inheritance, talks about the art that survives through time. It’s about the inheritance of the shame and the pain and the black ball.”

That inheritance, and what we do with it, is what the film keeps returning to. Alberto’s 2017 storyline functions as a kind of reckoning — not just with his grandfather’s buried identity, but with the tendency of history to flatten the people who lived it. As Glenn Close’s character Isabelle, a historian, puts it: history is not about facts, but about the people who made those facts. “The work to remember,” she says, “is a way to avenge death.”

Why Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close Said Yes

The casting of two of cinema’s most iconic women in supporting roles was entirely intentional — and the stories of how it happened are almost as good as the film itself.

Cruz plays Nené, a singer-slash-performer in 1932 who delivers what one critic described as a showstopping cameo, schooling Sebastián on the then-nascent form of the modern transgender movement. The character grew out of a very Los Javis kind of dreaming. “If we’re making a war film, why don’t we get a cupletista, a Spanish singer from the ’30s who used to sing those really spicy songs?” Calvo recalled. “And then we kept dreaming. Couldn’t that be Penélope Cruz? And what is she going to do? She’s going to be a godmother who tells this kid you can be gay, you can be queer, you can be trans, you can be whatever you want because we were free in Madrid when we were young, and because of war, we are not anymore. So we kept dreaming until we had her.”

Close’s path to the film was equally unexpected. Calvo noted that there’s a long-standing phenomenon in Spain where it’s often foreigners who study and preserve Spanish and Hispanic history — because, as he put it plainly, “we don’t take responsibility for our history.” That observation shaped the decision to make the historian character American. As for Close specifically: she had already been a devoted fan of Los Javis’s Sundance-acclaimed series La Mesías. “So we sent her an email,” Calvo said. “When she replied, saying she would do anything we wanted because she was a huge fan of ours, it was an ‘Oh my God’ moment.”

Ambrossi was clear that having Cruz and Close wasn’t just about star power — it was about reach. “We wanted to make a big movie. We had enough of this feeling that LGBT stories should be small because LGBT stories can talk to anyone in the world. We wanted to make it big, and to have Penelope is like a dream, because a lot of people will be like, ‘Oh, Penelope is there’ and will connect with the story also.”

A Statement Film, Not Just a Queer Film

The three lead roles — Guitarricadelafuente, Bernardeau, and González — are all played by openly gay actors, a deliberate choice that Ambrossi described as deeply meaningful even if not a hard rule. “I don’t think it has to be mandatory, but I think it’s very special when it happens,” he said. “Gay actors, they know how to express what it’s like to be rejected, what it’s like to be given the black ball in your life, and we wanted to do that.”

Behind the camera, the production was similarly intentional — built with a large contingent of LGBTQ+ crew members. “We tried to make a casting with gay actors, openly gay actors, and behind the cameras, with a lot of LGBT people, making a queer movie,” Ambrossi said.

The film is a superproduction in every sense: hundreds of extras, multiple locations, elaborate costume and production design that recreates wartime Spain and also stages large-scale surrealist sequences. It’s co-produced by Los Javis’s own Suma Content label alongside Movistar Plus, Los Esquiadores A.I.E., Le Pacte, and crucially, Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar’s El Deseo. The Almodóvar connection is more than logistical — the film carries his DNA in its use of melodrama, its convoluted algebra of desire, and its willingness to let the personal become mythological. One critic noted that Almodóvar himself attempted something similar in the closing scenes of 2015’s Parallel Mothers, his own tribute to the missing of the Civil War — and that La Bola Negra not only succeeds where he fell short, it takes the concept of romantic love to an entirely new level.

Ambrossi, asked about competing at Cannes alongside his mentor, was almost disarmingly humble. “I admire Pedro immensely. He is to me our great director, and he inspired me so much professionally but also personally as a gay kid. I don’t feel like I can even say we are competing with Pedro and Sorogoyen because they are better,” he laughed. “I look up to them.”

Spain is only behind France in the number of Palme d’Or contenders across the last two editions of Cannes, and Ambrossi is proud of what that represents. “What we are seeing is the result of several years of work and of continuous investment. These are the fruits of great labor, and I hope it continues for many, many years.”

As for La Bola Negra itself — it’s long, it’s ambitious, and it demands a lot from its audience. The cross-cutting between timelines is masterful more often than not, though the 1932 storyline occasionally feels less fully realized than its counterparts. Lorca’s poetry doesn’t always survive translation. And yes, at Cannes press screenings, the French and English subtitles were sometimes at odds with one another — a reminder that some things resist being carried across languages.

But none of that diminishes what Los Javis have built here. “This country has too many love stories buried in the fields,” one character says near the film’s end. La Bola Negra is, among many things, an act of excavation — and what it unearths is extraordinary.

The post ‘La Bola Negra’ Is the Queer Epic Cannes Needed appeared first on Cream.

• Javier Bardem confirmed he’s lost acting roles and brand campaigns due to his vocal support for Palestine.
• The Spanish star shrugged off the consequences, saying “American studios are not the only place.”
• Bardem called out the industry’s treatment of Susan Sarandon as evidence of a broken system.
• He said he expected to be booed at the 2026 Oscars when he said “free Palestine” — and got a standing ovation instead.
• Bardem has a packed slate ahead: Cape Fear, Dune: Part Three, Bunker with Penélope Cruz, and rom-com Hello & Paris with Kate Hudson.

Javier Bardem knows he’s lost work because of his stance on Palestine. He just doesn’t particularly mind.

In a wide-ranging new interview with Variety, the Oscar-winning actor confirmed what many in Hollywood had been whispering: that his outspoken activism — including declaring “No to war, and free Palestine” while presenting at the 2026 Academy Awards alongside Priyanka Chopra Jonas — has cost him real professional opportunities. Film roles. Brand campaigns. Gone.

“Yes, I’ve heard things: ‘They were going to call you about that project, but that’s gone.’ Or ‘This brand was going to ask you to do the campaign, but they cannot,'” Bardem said. His response? “It’s fine. I live in Spain. American studios are not the only place.”

That’s not bravado for its own sake. Bardem, 57, is genuinely unbothered — and he’s got the perspective to back it up. He sat down with Variety in Madrid, where he lives with wife Penélope Cruz and their two children, Leo, 15, and Luna, 12. The city, the family, the life he’s built there — it’s his grounding. Hollywood’s approval is, by his own account, not the thing he’s optimizing for.

“That Tells You How Wrong This Whole System Is”

Bardem was equally direct about what he sees as the industry’s pattern of punishing dissent. He pointed specifically to Susan Sarandon, who has said it’s been “impossible” to find television work since she was dropped by her agent in 2023 following her participation in a pro-Palestine rally.

“She was one of the first ones to go there. And then she got that professional punishment,” Bardem said. “That tells you how wrong this whole system is.”

He’s not the only one to have paid a price. Melissa Barrera was fired from Scream 7 in 2023 after posting on Instagram about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to the October 7 Hamas attacks. “There were times where I felt like my life was over,” Barrera later told The Independent. The chilling effect across Hollywood has been real and well-documented.

But Bardem sees the tide moving, even if slowly. “Some people will put you on a blacklist. I cannot tell you if that’s true or not — I don’t have the facts. What I do have the facts about are the new people that are calling you because they want you in their project. That makes me feel that the narrative that they’ve been using for so long is changing.”

Ready for the Boos — and Getting an Ovation Instead

When Bardem stepped onto the Oscars stage in March, he was prepared for the worst. He’d been thinking about Vanessa Redgrave, who in 1978 used her Oscar acceptance speech to reference Palestine and was met with scattered boos and public condemnation from the stage by screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky later that same night. Bardem had mentally rehearsed the same reception.

“I was ready,” he told Variety, miming a wave of disapproval. Instead, when he said “No to war, and free Palestine,” the room erupted in applause.

He’d worn an anti-war patch reading “No a la guerra” — “No to war” in Spanish — on his suit that night. It wasn’t his first public statement: at the Emmys in September, he’d worn a keffiyeh on the red carpet and told reporters he “cannot work with someone who justifies or supports the genocide” in Gaza. He also wore a red Artists4Ceasefire pin at the ceremony.

At the Vanity Fair Oscars afterparty, Bardem reflected on what the applause in the Dolby Theatre actually meant. “When I said ‘free Palestine’ in the room, in that theatre, the room broke out in a round of applause. So there is support, there is a lot of people supporting it, but it’s not loud enough,” he said. “That’s what I try to inspire. Like, ‘Guys, it’s OK. You can be part of the community of filmmaking, and also be a citizen, and it’s OK.'”

He also had a pointed observation about why more of his peers stay silent: “I think they don’t want to feel, themselves, uncomfortable. And that makes me uncomfortable; me and many others.”

On the broader geopolitical moment, Bardem connected the dots between media narratives and power. “We’re going back to the same beginning of lying and manipulating us in information and narratives they want to put out there for us to believe,” he said on the Vanity Fair carpet. “It’s about creating chaos that only benefits the richest and the people that has the power.”

A Very Full Plate — and a Two-Week Rule

None of this has slowed Bardem down professionally. If anything, he’s in one of the busiest stretches of his career. His Apple TV+ limited series reimagining of Cape Fear — in which he takes on the Max Cady role previously played by Robert Mitchum and Robert De Niro — drops June 5. “If it was a pure remake, I would have never dared,” he said. “But the essence of the craziness, of the nightmare, of the fever dream of ‘Cape Fear,’ is there.” Julia Roberts, a longtime friend and co-star, has already seen the trailer. “I will not be watching this,” she declared. “I barely made it through the trailer.”

He’s also heading to Cannes this month with Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s family drama The Beloved, in which he plays a flawed filmmaker director whose complicated relationship with his daughter forces a reckoning. “That takes us directly to the toxic masculinity of his generation and his age — which is my age, which is my culture, which is Spain,” Bardem said of the character’s arc.

Then there’s Dune: Part Three, due December 18, where he reprises his role as Stilgar — the Fremen leader whose unwavering faith in Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides drives much of the trilogy’s emotional engine. Director Denis Villeneuve said of casting Bardem: “I needed someone who wouldn’t judge this character, and would instead embrace Stilgar’s worldview.” Bardem, characteristically, found the political parallel himself. “Religious reasoning for bombing countries. Religion is a very dangerous weapon of manipulation and fear, and a tool to excuse the most horrible violence. And you see that in Stilgar — because, in the third one, you’re now seeing the consequence of that.”

He’s also filming Hello & Paris, a romantic comedy opposite Kate Hudson, shooting in London. And then there’s Bunker, a psychological thriller written and directed by Oscar winner Florian Zeller (The Father), which reunites him on screen with Cruz — a project both of them were drawn to precisely because it would force them to be present with each other in a new way.

“It’s a beautiful story that is going to help us see again,” Bardem said. “Because sometimes you are immersed in your daily shit and the kids and the house, and it’s like — when do you sit down and look at each other again?”

Despite all of it, Bardem has one non-negotiable contract clause — and it has nothing to do with trailer size or hotel suites. “The only thing I do pay attention to is, no more than two weeks away from my family.” Since his son was born, either he or Cruz has always stayed home with the kids. On Bunker, which shot in Madrid, they were both home for dinner.

On Penélope, and the Life They’ve Built

At home in Madrid, the two Oscar winners keep their professional lives firmly out of the living room. No posters, no photos, nothing that reminds them of the industry they work in. Their his-and-hers Oscars — Cruz won hers for Vicky Cristina Barcelona — are kept out of sight. They don’t talk shop at the dinner table.

“We try to compartmentalize life and fiction,” Bardem said.

Roberts, who’s visited them in Madrid, puts it simply: “It just feels good when you’re around them and see them as a family. Paella on Sunday — don’t miss it!”

Bardem, who first met Cruz when he was 21 and she was 16 on the set of Jamón Jamón, is still visibly smitten. Reflecting on their years together, he said: “Penélope is an amazing, beautiful, good human being — the way she relates to her family, to her friends, to our kids, to me, to herself. It’s been a lot of years, and I haven’t seen a hint of malice in her.”

Then he grinned. “On top of that, she’s amazingly fucking beautiful! When I see her being photographed on some magazines, I go, ‘Is that my wife? Jesus, is it? It must be!'”

Cape Fear hits Apple TV+ on June 5. Dune: Part Three opens in theaters December 18, 2026.

The post Javier Bardem Lost Roles Over Palestine Support — and Doesn’t Care appeared first on Cream.