Interview: ‘La Bola Negra' Directors Los Javis Discuss Their Majestic Film About Sexuality and the Ghosts of the Spanish Civil War

Still fresh off their Best Director prize at Cannes, collaborators Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo (popularly known as 'Los Javis') took their award-winning movie La Bola Negra to the Telluride Film Festival. The movie is already being recognized as a masterpiece of queer cinema, but it is much more than a story constrained by the main characters' sexual orientation. The tale, told in three interlocking parts across several decades, is a story about the love of art and its power to save us, about the importance of loyalty to one's true self, and about how we are still haunting by the sins of the past—personally and also as a collective people. In the present, a young writer receives a mysterious inheritance that lead him to confront previously unknown parts about his family's past. The two other parts of the movie that take place in the 1930s. In one, a young musician finds himself unwittingly embroiled in the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. In the other, a young idealist grapples with the humiliation his family experiences after he is rejected by the townspeople due to rumors about his sexuality. 'La Bola Negra' Review: Magic and Maximalism Mix in Los Javis' Stunning Gay Extravaganza [A] Telluride By the end of the runtime, which is nearly three hours in theory but feel more like three profound sighs, Los Javis get into the soul of the characters they created but also into the soul of their audience, showing us again but this time with much more tenderness what passion and love can do even across the years and in the face of unspeakable horrors—while also reminding us of the lengthy road we still need to travel. With supporting performances by Glenn Close and Penélope Cruz, Netflix's La Bola Negra will undoubtedly be one of the most celebrated films this year. It is already firmly installed in the constellation of queer cinema and Spanish cinema as well. At Telluride, Los Javis took us deeper into their creative processes and more, in the interview that follows. This interview was conducted in Spanish and edited for clarity and length. Jorge Tenreiro: Congratulations on your beautiful movie. Let's start with—why this story? Javier Calvo: That's a hard question to answer. The stories you decide to tell is like falling in love—it's something you feel inside. You feel there is a need to tell the story. In my case it was reading La Piedra Oscura [a play written by Spanish playwright Alberto Conejero], that is the play we adapted into the plot for Sebastian and Rafael. Reading the first pages of that I got very excited, I started to cry and did not understand why, and then you start pulling at strings and you start discovering what of your experience you want to put into it and what it is you want to tell, and you start finding that. So, why? Because you feel it. Javier Ambrossi: Yes. Javier is the one who showed me the play. He said: 'read it.' And when I read it, it spoke a lot to me. And while we were writing the script, at some point you feel: 'ah yea, yes, this is what I wanted.' In my case it was feeling that I wanted to make a big movie, a gay, epic movie, like all the kinds that do not exist. I wanted to make a war movie, but respecting its queer aspects. And then, of course, an homage to Federico Garcia Lorca that, 90 years ago this year was assassinated. So, therefore, it make a lot of sense, how those pieces came together. Also we had never made a story about what it means to be a gay man. We had done Veneno [a reality TV show about a trans actress], we also explored lesbian awakening in La mesias . We have always talked about the other letters in LGBTQ+, but we had never spoken about a gay man, which is very specific. It was time. JT: That's how Lorca spent his career talking about women and it was not until later he got to explicitly gay stuff. JA: Yeah, sometimes we use metaphors and symbols to talk about ourselves, but this is the most naked film we have made. JT: A stupid question to get aout of the way—obviously you are fans of Lorca, right? JA: A lot. JT: Any favorite? JA: I love Yerma [about a woman who despairs when she cannot conceive]. Yerma is super gay, you know? It is the very real drama of someone who knows they're not going to have children, and that has to find the way to get that descendance they want. JC: I like El Teatro Imposible a lot, but really, where I think his style is most bare, where he does something very austere and elegant but also enormous is The House of Bernarda Alba [five spinster sisters fight viciously over a single suitor who comes to town]. He never saw it on stage as he was assassinated before. I think that's the one that I am most gets in my head every time I read it. JT: Back to you. Lorca's body of work es very, very tragic. This movie, at least to me, filled me with hope. I don't know if that was your idea but if it was, I'd like to know why—when his story and the stories he told were all so tragic. JC: I am destroyed every time I see the movie. JA: (Laughing). Yes, but I do think it's true that it has some vitalism. JC: Right but that's it right there—more so than hope, because the movie is sad and painful, there is a message that comes through the voice of the snow 'you have to live.' I think it's like Javi says, this movie has vitalism in that it encourages you to live, to not deny yourself, to not deny those who lived before us. So yes it is hopeful in the sentence that it screams that you have to live. JA: Our rights as a community are based on a lot of death, silence, pain. When you realize that, when you realize how luck at least some of us are in the present—though in a lot of countries we are still seeing horrific things happening to our community—that movie encourages you to say that—'if you can do it, do not be a conformist, try to fall in love, be happy, look for a spark.' JT: Shifting gears to you two as collaborators, how do you divide who does what? JC: Javi is bigger picture. He is very sensitive. I am more on this or that phrase, this or that shot. He is very involved in what we have to tell, if we are being true to our story, if the actor is having a good day. He is in the big and I am in the small. It also worked that way in the script. I am on the phrase, and him on the chalkboard with the structure. JT: I loved the credits at the start. JA: They were pretty, right? It's an artist called Manuel Antonio Dominguez, the artist who does that. He takes old pictures and paints them over with acrylic. It's a piece of art he has created. Obviously signaling that always in a big multitude there is one of us in the gay community hidden, of our LGBTQ+ collective, and that we are always united, too. JT: Now let's talk about inspiration. I saw Fellini and Fosse. Who else? JA: Pedro [Almodóvar] (laughing) JC: Pedro, Klimov, Bela Tar, Claire Denis. JT: What are your favorite parts of your movie? JA: What touches me more changes, from the moment you write the script to each screening, it has been changing. JC: To me its the prologue, the snow, and the small town with Goyita. JA: I would say all the ending. All the poetry at the end. And in each project we learn something fot the next. I was very hooked on the poetry. I think poetic things are not done a lot in cinema today. It is not as common. I think there is something in the ending that is super modern. The idea of vindicating poetry. That not everything means the same to everyone. I think it is something very important in cinema and literature. It seems sometimes like everything has to be the same for everyone—everyone has to be bored at the same point, and sometimes things are just done too by the book. Poetry is the opposite. It's all polysemy. JT: There's a lot of things in the film that are very specific about the gay community. For example, at the start you show Grindr. A lot of people will understand that. But there are other things that people will not understand. For example, at the end Goyita quotes a line from Titanic . These are all very personal things. JA: That was a message to explain the big nature of the film. It is an auteur Project, sure, but it has a big ambition, an American ambition, a desire to get to the public. JT: But weren't you afraid of putting things on like Grindr, sex scenes, etc. That for the broad audience this Will be a turnoff? Or you just thought 'eff it'? You were very brave. JA: I don't think it's bravery. It's just my world. It's what you [pointing to JC] always say about how Pedro did it. JC: It is our world, it is natural to us. We did not think about the result. I want to like it and to talk about me. But I don't want to manipulate people. There's a difference between creating content for people to like it and creating it to manipulate them. I want to reach people, but I want a piece of art that talks about me. So I can't lie to the audience. Lying to the audience I would reach fewer people than I'd like. JA: Also the movie is very open to all audiences, it represents us but it has something for everyone and I think everyone can understand it. JT: So one of the objectives I guess was to talk about yourself? JC: Yes, which has a lot of meanings. Obviously none of this happened to me. I was not in the Civil War. But it talks about what I like— JA: Yes, your sensibility. JC: And the story I want to tell, and what excites me, what hurts me. It is a piece that talks about me because it comes from my soul. JA: Plus we were screenwriters, directors, everything. There was no one who told u show to do it, the final cut. JC: Didn't Spielberg say his father worked with computers and his mother taught music, so the aliens communicate through computers with music. Soy, yes, you always have top ut something of yourself. JT: So what I get from the script you [Javier Ambrossi] were with the words and—a JA: Sometimes we switched. JC: Yeah we would switch. JA: It's more in general that he is very specific and I am not. I am more general with ideas. He is very specific with camera movements. I am more that I know what has to happen in this moment or what emotion needs to be hit. I am more intuitive. JT: The editing— JA: We were lucky to have the best film editors in Spain, Alberto Gutierrez, and we have worked with him on all our projects. He is like a brother. JC: But we were very involved, we were sitting there in the cutting room. JA: Yes it's very important, how many projects fail because of the script and the editing. JT: What about the work with actors. Obviously Penélope and Glenn have a lot of experience and the others too, but you asked them to do things that were very hard and they did them very well. What techniques said you use, especially if the story if something personal to you, things you personally liked. JC: In Spain there's an actress we work with called Amaya who says we hypnotized her. And yes we try to engage in some hyposis in creating our atmosphere. We are always playing music. We try to make sure the actors don't see the crew. That they believe they are really there. We try natural scenes and pre-decorated sets. And analyzing each person and where their emotions are, their light, their fun. And we start tailoring our approach to each of them, and creating a sensorial experience for them.. JA: We also look for people with a connection to the role. That he be a musician for example, or that they have a pain in common. Or that they can understand the roles from a personal place. We look for people who are looking for catharsis. JC: It's a sensorial trip, we make them believe it's true. It's like a mind trip. JA: We set them up for catharsis, a real one. From the extras, to the leads, to the supporting roles. All the time we want this, that it become very real. JT: The mom, for example, Lola Dueñas. JA: Yes and she is already like that. She comes with a real desire to work with the truth. She either works with the truth or does not do the part. JT: Tell me about the characters played by Glenn & Penélope—in my view they are two pivotal characters and in the life of gay men. Where you inspired in anyone? JC: Penélope is based on the 'cupletistas' from the 1915-1920 period in Madrid. These were singers that became very famous signing about what they saw on the street—sex and drugs, they were very open and free. There were drag Queens that imitated them. There were gay authors like Alvaro Retana who wrote novels about them that were absolutely homosexual. It's an homage to that generation that thought of themselves as free only to later live through two dictatorships and ending up persecuted, or assassinated, or jailed, or disappeared. JA: It's also true that there's a fairy godmother aspect to them. At least Penélope. She appears in Sebastian's life to tell him there is another world, there's a window to another world. Each of us in the gay community has someone that opens our eyes and says – hey, there's another world out there of people like you.' In this case it was Penélope. There are people for whom it's a drag queen. There a people for whom it is their mother, like Carlos' mom that tells him 'go to Madrid.' It is a very real scene. JT: You are making me cry again. JA: Well, women are just super important for gay men. For me it's been my mother, my sister, the actresses from Pedro. Victoria Abril. Carmen Maura. The actresses from his work. His work. JT: Love Pedro, but you are taking cinema to the next level—what Lorca was never able to do—now let's talk about gay men. The gay community is going to receive this movie with love, Hollywood is receiving it well. Would you work in Hollywood? JC: Yes the next project we do will be in English. JA: Or at least we would like that. We would like to mix languages. We are writing it now. JT: How do you feel about the reception you're getting? JC: You never imagined that it's going to happen. It's a movie about your culture, your history, and all of a sudden the people receive it with such excitement that you realize that local things are universal, that when you talk about yourselves, it sounds universal. JA: With Veneno we had a lot of calls but it was no our moment. That movement there is something about us that we are more prepared to say yes to things. AW: And fascism… JC: Obviously still lurking around. JA: That moment of the movie connects with people today. With the people of a lot of countries including the United States. It connects with a lot of people… La Bola Negra will be released in select theaters on October 16 and on Netflix in the U.S. and Latin America on December 2.