It’s full speed ahead for Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s lavish, lush, and queer historical drama “La Bola Negra” this fall movie season. It’s now a surefire Oscar heavyweight and even frontrunner, especially after winning the Oscar-precursory TIFF People’s Choice Award first prize.

Known as Los Javis, the filmmakers (who are also exes) shared the Best Director prize at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival with Pawel Pawlikowski for “Fatherland.” It’s easy to see why, as their unabashedly grand movie traverses multiple 20th- and 21st-century timelines with impeccable craft to resurrect an unfinished text by Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. The film will also mark Netflix’s longest theatrical window to date once “La Bola Negra” launches in select theaters on October 16. Watch the full official trailer below.

“La Bola Negra” is inspired by an unfinished play of the same name by Lorca, the gay writer who rose to fame in the 1920s as a member of the Spanish literary movement Generation of ’27. Lorca was murdered in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War by followers of Francisco Franco, and his body remains undiscovered to this day.

The film weaves together three interconnected stories of the lives of gay men across a century of Spanish history. One storyline set in 1932 is based on Lorca’s original play, about a young man named Carlos (Milo Quife) who applies for membership to his father’s casino but faces accusations of homosexuality. A 1937 storyline draws on material from the play “La piedra oscura” by Alberto Conejero, who co-wrote the screenplay with Los Javis, and follows a musician-turned-Nationalist soldier, Sebastián (Guitarricadelafuente), who develops a relationship with prisoner-of-war Rafael Rodríguez Rapún (Miguel Bernardeau), Lorca’s real-life lover. The final storyline in 2017 follows Alberto (Carlos González), a history grad student researching queer music of the 1920s whose long-lost maternal grandfather unexpectedly dies.

The cast of “La Bola Negra” also includes Pedro Almodóvar muse Lola Dueñas, a scene-stealing Penélope Cruz, plus Glenn Close (speaking Spanish!), Julio Torres, and Yenesi. The film also has a score by Raül Refree, along with the original song “La Nieve,” written and performed by Guitarricadelafuente.

Here’s the trailer for “La Bola Negra.”

“La Bola Negra” opens in select Los Angeles and New York theaters starting October 16, with more markets to follow. It will then debut on the Netflix streaming platform December 2.