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AFC conversations at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival
Gris Jordana talks about her image work on "La bola negra", by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi
By François Reumont for the AFC
The Spanish directing duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (Los Javis) have embarked on a sort of deliberately veiled biopic of the great writer Federico García Lorca. Their film interweaves three narrative strands across three separate eras without any distinction in the editing (the sound of one era even sometimes overlapping with another during transitions). After these 2 hours and 35 minutes, which at times follow in the footsteps of Hollywood’s great historical epics, one realises just how complicated the film must have been to shoot. Director of photography Gris Jordana, who previously worked on their series “Las mesias”, is shooting this film. La Boal Negra just received the Best Director Prize in Cannes Film Festival 2026. (FR)
Spain 1932, 1937, 2017. Three men. Three eras. A single invisible thread of desire, pain and legacy. *La Bola Negra* spans time to reveal what unites them. An adaptation of the unfinished novel La bola negra, by Federico García Lorca, who was murdered by the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The film is also inspired by La piedra oscura, by playwright Alberto Conejero, about the love affair between Lorca and the footballer Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, both victims of the Spanish Civil War.
