Three Gay Lives, Three Eras: 'La Bola Negra' Runs 1932, 1937 and 2017
Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, the directors of the award-winning film La Bola Negra, used their appearance at Deadline's Contenders London to talk about the generational trauma behind it.
The structure is where that idea gets physical. The film follows the interconnected stories of three gay men in three years — 1932, 1937 and 2017 — and takes its cue from Alberto Conejero's 2013 play La piedra oscura.
Two of those years sit five years apart; the third lands eighty years later. That arrangement is a claim in itself: the 1930s and the present are put in the same frame rather than kept in separate rooms.
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The pairing of 1932 and 1937 is the quiet move here. Two eras close enough to comment on each other can do something a single period piece can't — show continuity, not just contrast.
Or it splits the attention: a play from 2013 has one centre of gravity, and spreading that across three timelines risks two of them becoming illustration for the third.