La Bola Negra, the upcoming time-bending gay love story, finally got a full trailer.
The much-anticipated film has already earned Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi — known collectively as Los Javis — the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival and a 20-minute standing ovation, as well as the People’s Choice Award at TIFF, and now audiences are finally getting a real glimpse at the three interconnected gay love stories that are making La Bola Negra a critical darling.
Spanning decades of Spanish history, La Bola Negra seeks to reclaim gay love stories lost to the sands of time because the country was in the grip of fascism and dealing with rampant homophobia.
“Carlos (Milo Quifes) longs to belong in a fractured Spain. Sebastián (Guitarricadelafuente) finds connection across enemy lines. And Alberto (Carlos González) uncovers a long-buried family secret — one that finally gives voice to truths the past tried to erase,” the official synopsis reads.
La Bola Negra, which also stars Julio Torres, Penelope Cruz, and Glenn Close, jumps through three interconnected timelines — 1932, 1937, and 2017 — as a writer named Alberto Azcuna tries to uncover how his own life is intrinsically linked to the two other gay love stories the film gifts audiences.
The trailer shows the epic, sweeping drama and complicated love stories playing out against a beautiful and heartbreaking historical backdrop that kept these queer men from embracing their identities.
In an especially poignant moment that seems to crystallize one of the central messages of the film, Close’s character says to Alberto, “I think the most important question for you to ask is who was your grandfather and why did he spend his entire life hiding.”
Even the short trailer will have your eyes getting misty over the film, so it seems clear that the devastatingly beautiful film will warm our hearts and emotionally wreck us in equal measure.
La Bola Negra will premiere in theaters on Oct. 16 before landing on Netflix on Dec. 2.
