Los Javis make history for Spanish cinema in Cannes by winning the award for Best Direction for 'La bola negra': "Art serves to understand and love the other"

Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, known as Los Javis, have made history at the Cannes Festival by winning the award for Best Director for La bola negra, their second film as directors. The award, shared ex aequo with Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski for Fatherland, confirms the international phenomenon that the Spanish film has become after revolutionizing the festival with an ovation of almost 20 minutes.

In this way, Los Javis become the only Spanish filmmakers who have achieved the Best Director Award at the Cannes Festival, alongside historical figures such as Luis Buñuel, who obtained it in 1951 for Los olvidados, and Pedro Almodóvar, awarded in 1999 for Todo sobre mi madre.

During their acceptance speech, Los Javis vindicated the role of cinema as a tool for empathy and defense of LGTBIQ+ rights. “The film speaks of humanity, of seeing the other as a human being, of understanding them, comprehending them and loving them,” expressed Javier Calvo before the audience. Days before, the directors had already moved Cannes with a powerful political statement: “Ninety years ago Federico García Lorca was murdered by fascism because he was gay. We are here to stay”.

The film, inspired by unfinished texts by Federico García Lorca, interweaves three stories set in 1932, 1937 and 2017 to build a narrative about identity, historical memory and dissident loves. The cast is headed by Guitarricadelafuente as Sebastián, Miguel Bernardeau as Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, Carlos González as Alberto, Milo Quifes as Carlos and Lola Dueñas as Teresa. Also noteworthy are the performances of Penélope Cruz, who plays the couplet singer Nené Romero, Glenn Close as Isabelle Durand and Alberto Cortés in the role of Lorca.

So much so, that the streaming platform Netflix has acquired the distribution rights of the film in the United States. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the audiovisual giant did not hesitate to acquire the property of the Spanish film after its triumph at the Cannes Film Festival, where the film has consolidated itself as one of the great revelations of the event.

With this recognition, La bola negra becomes one of the great protagonists of the edition and culminates a historic year for Spanish cinema in Cannes. The Palme d'Or was finally for Fjord, by Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, while Los Javis' film definitively consolidates the creative duo as one of the most relevant voices in current European cinema.