This year Netflix has made it very clear that its “Oscar” movie isn’t going to come from the United States, but from a foreign country. After the Academy opened itself up to films from all corners of the world with the success of Parasite and the nominations for The Secret Agent, Emilia Pérez, I’m Still Here, Anatomy of a Fall or All Quiet on the Western Front, it was only a matter of time before someone go all in on a foreign film. In this case it’s La bola negra, a Spanish film by Los Javis that quite a few people are putting on their best-of-the-year lists… and that looks poised for awards-season success.
Love, death and desire in Spain
La bola negra, directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, not only won them the award for best direction at the Cannes Film Festival, but dozens of insiders expect it to be nominated, at the very least, for best picture, best adapted screenplay and best director at the Academy Awards. For now, Spain has done the obvious and submitted it for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film.
La bola negra was up against two excellent films, El ser querido and Los Domingos, which in another year would’ve had a better chance of getting into the category. However, in this case it was more than a foregone conclusion: La bola negra was the only real choice, which will go up against some of the year’s strongest films, like Fjord, Coward, Rose, All of a sudden or Possible Love. Let’s just say it won’t have it easy at all.
Los Javis, an artistic duo (and formerly a romantic one) already dazzled international audiences with series like Veneno, after which they were offered the chance to work in Hollywood straight away, La Mesías or Paquita Salas, but we’d been waiting for their second film since their debut with La Llamada. Now it doesn’t look like things are slowing down. The era of Los Javis has only just begun.
