Trivia
La bola negra
Directed by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo · starring Guitarricadelafuente, Lorenzo Zurzolo and Javier Butler
- 15 facts
- 2026
La bola negra: trivia
All 15 facts
- 1
Lorca left four pages
Lorca was writing the play in the summer of 1936, weeks before militiamen took him from a friend's house in Granada and shot him on the road out of Víznar. Four pages of it survive. They went into a drawer and were not published until 1987, inside an academic edition of his fragments and abandoned projects, and they have still never been translated into English.
- 2
Those four pages are the 1932 story
In the fragment, a young man from a respectable family tells his father he has applied to join a casino in Granada. The members vote by dropping balls into an urn, and his comes out black. 'La bola negra' follows that almost to the letter and invents everything that comes after it.
- 3
Four audience awards
Its festival run brought in four prizes voted for by the audience: Sydney's, the People's Choice in Toronto, the audience award at San Sebastián and the Flash Forward prize in Busan.
- 4
Penélope Cruz's cuplé coach
To get her musical number ready, Penélope Cruz worked with Olga María Ramos, daughter of the cuplé singer Olga Ramos and the keeper of Madrid's Museo del Cuplé. Los Javis went to her house and to the museum, recorded her for hours singing with her pianist, and stayed for her croquetas. Ramos ended up in a sequence alongside her, and between them they reworded lines of the cuplés to sound more like Madrid: one "no me digas" became "no me extraña".
- 5
The extras' faces are genuine
Cruz rehearsed her number for months in private, and nobody told the extras she was in the film at all. When the theatre doors opened and the tank rolled in with her on top of it singing "Batallón de Modistillas", they gaped instead of cheering. The directors had asked her beforehand whether she would accept an improvised first take, and she said yes. Olga María Ramos had to shove the soldiers aside and came off the shoot with bruises on her arms.
- 6
A thousand extras, ten chosen on instinct
Of the thousand or so extras in the sequence, Javier Ambrossi says he picked ten for the good feeling they gave him. They were the only ones allowed to touch Cruz.
- 7
Shot on 35mm
Gris Jordana shot 'La bola negra' on 35mm film rather than digital.
- 8
It started in an empty village
Filming began in late August 2025 in Castil de Carrias, an abandoned village in Burgos. Two months later the crew moved to Madrid for the closing scenes.
- 9
They reopened a theatre shut for fifty years
For the theatre belonging to Cruz's character, the crew brought back a venue in Sigüenza that had been closed for fifty years.
- 10
Five metres of Saint Sebastian
One scene has Guitarricadelafuente's character escape a bombing by climbing a toppled statue of the martyr, the saint Lorca and Dalí wrote to each other about. The art director admits he was braced for complaints about the size of it, five metres of saint.
- 11
His first idea for Rapún was a footballer
Ambrossi had Héctor Bellerín in mind for the part of Rafael Rodríguez Rapún. It went to Miguel Bernardeau instead.
- 12
Glenn Close's character nods to Lorca's biographer
Isabelle Durand, the character Glenn Close plays, has a family background built to match that of the hispanist Ian Gibson, the poet's biographer.
- 13
Netflix gave it its longest run in cinemas
Netflix bought the United States rights for a figure reported at between four and five million dollars, and left 'La bola negra' in cinemas for 47 days before putting it on the service on 2 December. It is the longest window the company has ever granted, ahead of the one it gave 'Marriage Story'.
- 14
Madonna recommended it to twenty million people
On 1 November 2026 Madonna told Instagram to go and see it. "Go and see this film!!!", she wrote to her twenty million and more followers, adding "Bravo Los Javis!!".
- 15
The directors separated during the shoot
Ambrossi and Javier Calvo ended thirteen years together while they were making 'La bola negra', and said it would not interrupt the work in hand or whatever came next.