Spain’s Oscar entry “The Black Ball” has proven buzzy across the festival circuit, as its powerful message championing LGBTQ rights emerges from intertwined storylines revolving around sexuality and the Spanish Civil War.
But their stars are rising after a smash debut of the film at Cannes, where it won the best director award that was shared with Pawel Pawlikowski . The story spooled into existence as they developed the film, he explained.
The drama featuring cameos by the likes of Penelope Cruz and Glenn Close received a standing ovation Tuesday at the Toronto Film Festival , accolades that arrived the eve before Spain selected the film known as “La Bola Negra” in Spanish as its international feature film Academy Award contender. Directors Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, a creative duo affectionately known as “Los Javis” and who were until recently a couple, are famous in Spain particularly for their television work, if less widely known on the international stage. Speaking to journalists at a press conference at TIFF, he said “we wanted to make it big. It started “fragile” and “intimate,” Ambrossi said, “but we understood there was a political statement behind it” that allowed for an “epic gay drama for everyone. Calvo emphasized that the film is “about empathy and humanity and seeing the other as a person.”
