When Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (known together as Los Javis) embarked on their epic new film La Bola Negra, they knew one thing: Spanish pop musician Guitarricadelafuente had to play the central role of Sebastián.
“We were already big fans of Guitarrica’s work,” Calvo says. “With the sensitivity he brings onstage and his beautiful songs and performances, we knew he could do it, that he could act. He’s already telling a story when he’s singing. So we called him and said, ‘Do you want to do it?’ And he said, ‘Well, with you, yes, but I don’t know how to do it.’ We were like, ‘Don’t worry.’”
Thankfully, the stars aligned. “Guitarrica was such a revelation when we were writing that we were like, ‘If he’s doing it, we can do it. If not, we cannot,’” Ambrossi says. “The role of Sebastián was that important to us. Finding the right actor was the core of the movie and of the cast. And he committed even before there was a script. He was very important to us.”
Joining Guitarrica in La Bola Negra are three generations of performers, including faces both fresh and familiar. Los Javis’ new film unfolds across more than 80 years, with scenes set in 1932, 1937, and 2017. The stories of these eras intersect, each following the life of a different gay man pursuing life and love in Spain.
When it came to casting, Ambrossi and Calvo prioritized actors who could relate personally to their characters’ identities, experiences, and sexualities. “We love actors, and we totally understand why straight actors want to portray gay characters,” Ambrossi says. “I think it’s cool, and they can do it. But we want to do it another way.”
With the help of casting directors Eva Leira and Yolanda Serrano, Calvo and Ambrossi assembled a cast that would fulfill those requirements. It was a personal journey for Calvo, who has his own history as an actor. “I was a child actor, a gay actor on a teen show, and after that I never got any auditions,” Calvo says. “Gay actors had fewer opportunities. When we made a previous project [2020 television series Veneno] with trans women, what we had in front of the camera was so rich. It’s the same here with Carlos González, Milo Quifes, and Guitarrica: They know these experiences from the inside. For us, it just feels right that way.”
Read on to meet the cast of La Bola Negra, from Guitarrica to Glenn Close. La Bola Negra is playing in theaters now. You can buy tickets right here.
Sebastián is a musician and unlikely soldier who finds himself swept up in Spain’s Nationalist fascist movement in 1937. The conflicted young man soon finds himself guarding an enemy prisoner who will change his life forever. In addition to playing Sebastián, Guitarrica wrote an original song, “La Nieve,” for the film.
Guitarrica had little trouble adjusting to acting after years as a musician. “I arrived with no technique, knowing I had to learn everything from scratch,” he says. “But Los Javis encouraged me to just be myself, to live the character as me, and that made me feel protected. I learned a lot simply by watching. You have to trust what is happening and let the other person in the scene affect you.”
And Guitarrica soon found himself connecting to Sebastián more than he anticipated. “Sebastián is a guy from a village who carries a desire inside him that he doesn’t really know how to name or express,” he says. “He’s suddenly thrown into this very hostile world, surrounded by war and by a very rigid idea of masculinity. In a different way, I’d been circling similar questions while making my album Spanish Leather. That’s why Sebastián never felt completely foreign to me.”
La Bola Negra is Guitarricadelafuente’s film debut. You may have caught him on tour for his most recent album, Spanish Leather.
Rafael Rodríguez Rapún is the prisoner Sebastián finds himself entangled with in 1937, a Republican soldier suspected of holding crucial classified information.
Elite star Bernardeau connected intensely to the material. “For me, it is about the history of our country, of our people, of our ancestors,” he says. “I felt that, in a way, I was living through the stories that my grandmother used to tell me.”
Ambrossi and Calvo assigned Bernardeau some required reading: the unfinished Lorca play that shares a title with La Bola Negra and co-writer Alberto Conejero’s play La piedra oscura. “I would describe Rafael as a very unique person, full of different interests and worlds that he couldn’t explore because of his circumstances,” Bernardeau says.
Querer, Zorro, Terra Alta, Our Only Chance, Playa Negra, Sabuesos, Inhibidos
Alberto is a historian in 2017 working on his thesis in Athens, Greece. His life is upended when he receives an inheritance from his estranged maternal grandfather, bringing him back to Spain and setting off an investigation into his own family’s complicated history.
“He’s a very curious and sensitive person, very observant, but he has a hard time looking within,” González says. “He also has a difficult relationship with his mom and finds himself in an unexpected moment where all the things he was trying to escape, he’s suddenly confronted with them again.”
González sees La Bola Negra in part as a plea for audiences to stay in touch with their past. “I hope that this film reminds people to value the importance of memory, because right now we live in a world where there is war and conflict all around us,” he says. “My hope is that La Bola Negra is an invitation for people to look at the past to better take care of the future.”
Amar es para siempre, Veneno, Dangerous Moms, The Song, An Island Away from You, In Love All Over Again
Carlos is a young man in 1932 Spain trying to find a place for himself as a member of an exclusive casino’s social club. His story gives the film its title — Carlos dreads receiving the “black ball,” an anonymous vote against accepting him into the club.
Quifes found his way to a lead role in the film almost accidentally. “They were looking for someone from Andalusia, the region where I’m from, and someone who had that accent,” he says. “And I thought they were looking for extras for a movie. I thought I could earn some money.”
Quifes soon found himself on the set of La Bola Negra — and has nothing but glowing things to say about the experience. “I admire them so much,” he says. “Calvo is looking for more technique, more inner thinking. And Ambrossi is more about feeling, this way to look inside. They work so well together.”
La Bola Negra is Quifes’s film debut.
Teresa is Alberto’s mother in 2017, an occasionally harsh woman whose strained relationship with her son has reached a breaking point. But the pair are forced back together when Teresa’s father passes away and leaves Alberto a mysterious inheritance.
Dueñas previously worked with Ambrossi and Calvo on their television series La mesías, and jumped at the opportunity to reteam with them. “I would have said yes before reading anything,” she says. “One of the things I’ve always liked most about them, as directors and in life, is their sense of justice and love. In La Bola Negra it’s moving and beautiful to see how they connect different generations. Los Javis are revolutionary because they’re doing something completely new.”
La mesías, The Sea Inside, Volver, Broken Embraces, Me Too, Mensaka, Journey to a Mother’s Room
Juan Pablo is Alberto’s boyfriend in 2017, a solid presence in his life as his investigation spirals into unknown territory.
González and Torres became fast friends even before beginning production on La Bola Negra. “The first time I saw him, he struck me as a person full of tenderness, and our chemistry was immediate,” González says. “It’s like the body spoke before we even said a word to each other. There was a moment where we kind of held each other’s hand under the table, and it’s amazing how in this world of acting that connection shows up almost immediately.”
Problemista (which he also directed), Fantasmas, Los Espookys, My Favorite Shapes
Nené is a traditional cupletista cabaret singer who performs for Sebastián’s Nationalist regiment in 1937. She makes a lasting impression on Sebastián while hiding her own loyalties from the fascist crowd.
Cruz appears in only one scene in La Bola Negra, but the Academy Award winner had no qualms about taking the role. “I said, ‘There’s no small or big character. What story do we want to tell together? Please don’t ever worry about sending me something even if it’s just one page. I don’t judge things that way,’” Cruz says. “They sent it to me, and it was even more than I expected. It was a perfect script, and it’s really hard to find material like that. I fell in love with Nené Romero and what she represents.”
The Invite, Volver, Parallel Mothers, Vanilla Sky, All About My Mother, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace
Isabelle is a Lorca historian in 2017 who advises Alberto on his journey.
Close sought out the collaboration herself; the eight-time Academy Award nominee sent Calvo and Ambrossi a letter after she saw their series Las mesías. “I thought the audacity of their storytelling was breathtaking — to take four existing pages from Federico García Lorca and create that whole story out of it, and then have two other storylines going,” she says. “I think Los Javis are in that great Spanish tradition of rich, brutal, elemental writing. I had played Bernarda Alba in a theater production of Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba in college, and it was one of the great experiences of my acting life. So I was thrilled to be part of this film.”
Dangerous Liaisons, Fatal Attraction, The Big Chill, 101 Dalmatians, The World According to Garp, The Natural, Reversal of Fortune, Air Force One
