English
A shortage of snow in Madrid nearly prevented Spanish film La Bola Negra from reaching the Cannes Film Festival — and almost cost the production its most important scene. Editor Alberto Gutiérrez faced a race against time to complete the film before the March Cannes submission deadline.
A Film Built Around an Unfinished Legacy
Directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, the duo widely known as Los Javis, La Bola Negra draws from an unfinished play of the same name by Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca. Lorca wrote the play in 1936 but never completed it. Nationalist forces imprisoned and shot him at the start of the Spanish Civil War.
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The film follows three interwoven timelines. At its center is Carlos, played by Milo Quifes, a young gay man in Granada who seeks membership in an exclusive casino group. The group rejects him through a ballot of white and black balls. His story explores identity, family conflict, and the consequences of denying who he is. When he visits the casino to appeal his rejection, he denies being gay — and later wakes surrounded by snow, a symbol of death rooted in Lorca’s poetry. He then realizes he has died and pleads with his grieving mother for a second chance.
The Snow Problem
That snow sequence was essential. However, filming began in November, and Madrid produced no snow in December. The team waited into January. Still nothing fell. Because snow carried deep symbolic meaning in Lorca’s work, the filmmakers refused to fake it.
Finally, snow arrived — but not in Madrid. Granada, in southern Spain, received snowfall. The crew traveled there to shoot the scene. By then, it was February, leaving just one month before the Cannes deadline.
The tight timeline created another problem. Gutiérrez explains that the team could not hold test screenings. “We couldn’t get people to see two hours of a movie and then tell them to watch the ending in theaters,” he said. Instead, the team relied on each other. “We said, ‘We have to trust each other and our instincts because if we start listening to everybody’s opinion on the film, we won’t make it to Cannes.'”
Penélope Cruz and a Moment of Reassurance
One person the team did bring in was Penélope Cruz, who plays cabaret singer Nené Romero in the film. After Cruz watched a cut of the film, Gutiérrez sat alone in the next room, overcome with doubt and in tears. Director Javier Ambrossi then knocked on his door and brought Cruz in to meet him.
“She asked me, ‘Oh, but why are you crying?'” Gutiérrez recalls. “I said, ‘I’m not sure about the movie.’ She told me to stop crying because it was perfect.” That reassurance gave the team the confidence to submit the film to Cannes, where it gained acceptance.
A Standing Ovation and a Final Decision
At the Cannes premiere inside the Lumière Theatre, Gutiérrez sat behind actress Tilda Swinton. He laughs at the memory. “I was watching the movie through the eyes of Tilda Swinton for two and a half hours,” he said. The film received a 16-minute standing ovation and won the Best Director Award. The team declared that cut the final version. La Bola Negra is currently in theaters and will stream on Netflix on December 2.
