La Bola Negra – Life and the Pursuit of Freedom

Experiencing a film like La Bola Negra at the BFI IMAX is an impressive and visceral cinematic experience. Spanning three different timelines, the film is a tribute to the gay community and to life itself.

Every frame is deliberately asymmetrical, paying a moving tribute to different works of art. After all, the film itself was conceived to honour Federico García, a Spanish poet who was murdered because of his sexuality. From this, three different generations and stories intertwine, united by the desperation of being unable to live freely and fully.

Highly extravagant, almost to the point of being pretentious, as though the film were trying to give its characters freedom, at least through art.

The visual excess is not simply an aesthetic choice, but seems to become a form of rebellion. Where society imposes silence and repression, cinema responds with colours, bodies, images and an almost exaggerated theatricality. As if every shot were trying to give the protagonists back the space they were denied in real life.

Federico García, after all, began writing precisely to give voice to his romantic life, and it is no coincidence that all three stories are connected by self-acceptance and true love. Carlos, Sebastián and Alberto belong to completely different eras, yet none of them is truly happy.

Not even Alberto, who, in 2017, should feel completely free. Instead, he fails to understand how much he has until Sebastián's partner, the partner of his grandfather, who never openly came out as gay, tells him: "Your grandfather would be so proud of you and so happy that you can be who you are."

And this is precisely where the film becomes even more painful. Because the freedom Alberto almost takes for granted is the very freedom for which others had to sacrifice their happiness, hide themselves and give up a part of who they were.

Three generations that seem worlds apart, yet continue to carry the consequences of the same prejudice.

I would like to conclude by saying that it is genuinely difficult to put this film into words.

It is a work of art that hits you straight in the stomach. Penélope Cruz's cameo arrives at the very moment when your heart and mind need a break from all that love, everything left unsaid, and the sheer wonder of every single moment.

There is so much more that could be said, but I want to end by saying that we need more films like this. Films that stay with you, make you reconsider, rethink and reassess, and offer new ideals, new messages and new hopes to a world where queer communities and minorities still have to fight tooth and nail simply to be free to live.

Before the snow, as it does with Carlos, takes you away.