Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo's La Bola Negra, a Lorca-inspired triptych with Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close, had its UK premiere as a London Film Festival Gala at the Royal Festival Hall.
Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo’s La Bola Negra had its first screening in Britain at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank on Thursday 8 October 2026. At Cannes this year it won them Best Director, shared with Paweł Pawlikowski.
Ambrossi was born in Madrid in 1984 and worked as a television actor in his twenties. With Calvo he wrote the musical La llamada, staged at the Teatro Lara in Madrid from 2013.
The pair went on to create the series Paquita Salas, then Veneno, on the life of Cristina Ortiz, and La mesías.
The film braids three stories, set in Granada in 1932, in the Civil War in 1937 and in 2017. They draw on an unfinished work by Federico García Lorca and on Alberto Conejero’s play La piedra oscura.
It is Spain’s entry for the international feature Oscar, and Altitude brings it to British cinemas after the late Gala.
Penélope Cruz, an Academy Award winner who has made seven films with Pedro Almodóvar, plays Nené Romero. Glenn Close, Guitarricadelafuente and Miguel Bernardeau complete the cast.