‘It’s the gay Titanic!’ Inside La Bola Negra, the maximalist queer spectacular bound for Oscars glory

Oozing panache and bagging awards already, La Bola Negra is an eye-popping war and prejudice epic starring Penélope Cruz in a blond wig and Glenn Close speaking Spanish.

We meet the ex-lovers who dreamed it up When Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo – the directing duo known in their native Spain as “Los Javis” – began writing their queer epic La Bola Negra, they weren’t thinking about whether it would be stylish (which it is) or win numerous awards (which it has) or capture what they refer to as “the anti-fascist zeitgeist” (which it does). Instead, they thought only of scale. “I’m done with LGBTQ+ movies being niche,” says Ambrossi. “I was like, ‘Let’s make the biggest, gayest war movie ever . ’” Job done. At Cannes this year, the best director prize was awarded jointly to them and to Paweł Pawlikowski, who made the Thomas Mann road trip film Fatherland . La Bola Negra is now an Oscars frontrunner, with best picture and best director nominations all but guaranteed. Brimming with panache, the movie darts back and forth between three stories…