The Spanish singer-songwriter Guitarricadelafuente had never acted in a feature before La Bola Negra. The film has since shared Cannes’ best director prize and, on the last day of the Toronto International Film Festival (Sunday, Sept. 20), won TIFF’s People’s Choice Award, per TheWrap.
He plays Sebastián, Hola reports, in a story that follows three generations of men across nearly a century of Spanish history. Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, known as Los Javis, directed it and wrote it with playwright Alberto Conejero. The film draws on Federico García Lorca’s unfinished work of the same name and on Conejero’s play La piedra oscura. Penélope Cruz, Glenn Close, Miguel Bernardeau and Milo Quifes co-star.
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The directors cast a musician in the part. Guitarricadelafuente, whose 2025 album is Spanish Leather, told The FADER in March that making the film was “an incredible experience.” He also talked about sharing scenes with Cruz, who plays his mother.
To work with Miguel Bernardeau and Penélope Cruz was a dream come true.
Guitarricadelafuente, The FADER, March 18
Netflix released the official trailer on Monday (Sept. 28). Watch it below.
Why the win matters
The People’s Choice prize has a strong Oscar record. TheWrap counts 16 best picture nominees among the 18 winners since 2008, and La Bola Negra is the first film in a language other than English to take the award since Where Do We Go Now? in 2011. First runner-up went to Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky, second to Siân Heder’s Being Heumann.
Netflix is giving the film a rare theatrical run before it streams. It opens Oct. 16 at the Angelika Film Center and the Paris Theater in New York and at AMC Century City and AMC Burbank in Los Angeles, Hola reports, and it arrives on Netflix Dec. 2. That gap of more than 45 days is the longest theatrical window in Netflix history, TheWrap reported in August.
- In theaters
- Oct. 16, 2026 (New York and Los Angeles opening)
- On Netflix
- Dec. 2, 2026
- Directors
- Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (Los Javis)
- Awards
- Best director, Cannes; People’s Choice, TIFF
Sources
Added to the High Grailed archive on October 11, 2026.
