©Courtesy of Netflix

Netflix dropped a new trailer for Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s film, “La Bola Negra” which commences with a family secret and concludes with the sea’s rise on a rugged shoreline.

Spain’s official selection for the Best International Feature prize at the Academy Awards, “La Bola Negra” came to life when Calvo read La piedra oscura, a 2013 play by Alberto Conejero. “We had seen the play 10 years earlier, but rereading it with cinema in mind changed everything,” Ambrossi says. “Suddenly, in one night, the structure came to us: three timelines. It felt instinctive.”

A peek at those three timelines can be seen in the trailer. The first follows Carlos (Milo Quifes), a young man trying to become a member at an exclusive social club; the second follows Sebastián (Guitarricadelafuente), a soldier in the fascist army during the Spanish Civil War; and the third follows Alberto (Carlos González), a contemporary historian working to unravel a secret in his family’s past. As the film proceeds, these three generations of gay men begin to inform one another, weaving a rich tapestry that unfolds in 1932, 1937, and 2017. To tell these stories, Calvo and Ambrossi (known popularly as Los Javis) assembled a cast of actors, musicians, and first-time performers.

Spanish musician Guitarricadelafuente takes center stage, in a role that Ambrossi and Calvo knew he had to play. “We were already big fans of Guitarrica’s work,” Calvo says. “With the sensitivity he brings onstage and his beautiful songs and performances, we knew he could do it, that he could act. He’s already telling a story when he’s singing. So we called him and said, ‘Do you want to do it?’ And he said, ‘Well, with you, yes, but I don’t know how to do it.’ We were like, ‘Don’t worry.’”

Guitarricadelafuente also wrote original music for the film, including “La Nieve,” the ballad that underscores the trailer. “I didn’t want the song to feel like something placed over the film to explain the scene,” Guitarricadelafuente says, of writing the song. “I wanted it to come from the same emotional place as the characters.”

“La Bola Negra”, which recently won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival (making history as the first Netflix film to take the top prize), draws from both La piedra oscura and from La bola negra, the unfinished manuscript by Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca (1898–1936). “Spain has an extraordinary cultural legacy, but we don’t always carry it forward,” Ambrossi says. “What moved me is the idea that many people might discover Lorca through this film. That’s beautiful. Art can act as a bridge between generations.”

“La Bola Negra” comes to theaters on Oct. 16, 2026 in New York and Los Angeles, rolling out to cities around the United States and Canada over the following weeks. The film lands on Netflix on Dec. 2.