- Netflix released the first trailer for the film by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi on September 1.
- The story connects three generations of men through desire, pain, love, and Spanish memory.
- The cast includes Guitarricadelafuente, Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González, Penélope Cruz, and Glenn Close.
The black ball presented its first official trailer on September 1. The new film by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi spans almost a century of Spanish history through three generations of men connected by desire, pain, and love, after its presentation at Cannes and before its international tour.
A preview that unites three times of Spain
The preview released by Netflix places the narrative in three historical moments: a village casino, the Spanish Civil War, and the present. The song We’ll Meet Again, popularized by Vera Lynn, serves as a musical thread while the images hint at encounters, separations, and lives marked by what could have been and what was inherited.
The official information describes the film as a story that spans almost a hundred years. Its protagonists are Carlos, played by Milo Quifes; Sebastián, portrayed by Guitarricadelafuente; and Alberto, played by Carlos González. They do not belong to the same period, but their paths are linked by the same question: what traces does the past leave on those who come after.
The new preview does not turn that idea into a closed explanation. It presents fragments of intimacy, danger, and desire and allows the viewer to sense the correspondences. It is a strategy consistent with the approach announced by its directors, who position emotional inheritance and memory as engines of the narrative.
Lorca, Conejero, and queer memory
The title comes from an unfinished work by Federico García Lorca, murdered in 1936. The script is signed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi along with playwright Alberto Conejero. Netflix explains that the project adapts materials from La piedra oscura, La bola negra, and other Lorquian texts.
That literary genealogy is central. La piedra oscura already brought to the stage the figure of Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, Lorca’s last companion. In the film, Miguel Bernardeau plays Rapún. The project is not presented as a conventional biopic, but as a work that uses texts, characters, and resonances to observe homosexuality, silence, and the transmission of memory in Spain.
Conejero has defended in an interview published by El País the value of revisiting Lorca from the present. The film connects that perspective with a generational structure: it not only asks what happened, but how a hidden story can continue to shape the way of loving, fearing, or naming oneself decades later.
A cast between cinema, music, and stage
Guitarricadelafuente debuts as an actor in the role of Sebastián. Alongside him are Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González, and Milo Quifes. The cast also includes Lola Dueñas and Julio Torres, and features two presences of great international projection: Penélope Cruz plays Nené Romero and Glenn Close plays Isabelle.
The combination of performers with very different trajectories broadens the project’s reach. The choice of musician Guitarricadelafuente adds a dimension associated with a new Spanish artistic sensitivity, while names like Cruz, Dueñas, or Close place the film in an international conversation without erasing its cultural roots.
The production is a Movistar Plus+ Original produced by Telefónica Audiovisual Digital and Los Esquiadores AIE, with Suma Content Films. El Deseo, Le Pacte, Atresmedia, and CREA SGR participate, and Goodfellas manages international sales. The industrial deployment accompanies a story conceived from deeply Spanish materials.
From the festival to the public
The film had its presentation at Cannes in May 2026 and the preview confirms a next phase of international visibility. Netflix notes its passage through Telluride and announces a release in U.S. theaters on October 16, before its arrival on the platform in the United States and Canada on December 2.
For the Spanish publication, it is advisable to separate the data confirmed by the official source from the dates circulating in commercial agendas. The Netflix sheet consulted does not set a single release date for Spain in the same announcement. What is certain is that the new trailer opens the public campaign for a Spanish production that has already passed through Cannes.
Beyond the calendar, The black ball places Spanish homosexual memory at the center of a large-scale film. Its first preview promises a work about bonds and absences, about what was said and what was left unsaid. That ambition, combined with its Lorquian roots, makes the premiere one of the cultural LGTBIQ+ events of the autumn.
