Netflix has acquired Cannes Film Festival competition title The Black Ball (La Bola Negra), featuring Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close in supporting roles, for the U.S. THR confirmed the deal, which Goodfellas negotiated for the filmmakers, on Saturday.
The Spanish-language movie, directed by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, a creative duo, and former couple, known in their native country as Los Javis, world premiered at Cannes on Thursday evening to a thunderous and lengthy standing ovation.
La Bola Negra is the creative duo’s first feature since 2017’s Holy Camp! It tells the story of three men in three different periods — 1932, 1937 and 2017 — connected by the last works of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca.
Elastica will release the film in Spain in October, with co-producer Le Pacte handling the theatrical release in France.
“The film is a consideration of so much lost gay history, an acknowledgment of what it must have been for men of a dangerous and repressive era to find themselves helplessly drawn to one another, war and other horrors informing their lives but failing to wholly destroy what is so powerful and innate within them,” THR‘s review noted. “Los Javis execute this mighty vision with thrilling technical bravado. Nearly every shot in the film is a carefully composed wonder, either an eye-popping still-life tableau or a breathtaking bit of camera movement, all done up in lush, expensive-looking period detail. It’s a dazzlingly assured film, delivering the heady satisfaction of seeing something ambitious actually land its nervy attempt. One comes to festivals like Cannes partly to witness the arrival of major new filmmakers, and The Black Ball is just such an event. Los Javis shrewdly and gracefully toggle between timelines and know just when to add a sly and surprising joke lest a scene tilt into turgidity.”
The sale in a competitive process follows another major bidding showdown for Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid, which A24 ended up acquiring.
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