Spanish Directors Los Javis Win Best Director at Cannes for "La Bola Negra"

Spanish directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, known as "Los Javis," have won the Best Director prize at the 79th Cannes Film Festival for their film "La Bola Negra." The duo shared the award with Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski for his film "Fatherland."

"La Bola Negra" unfolds across three timelines — Republican Spain in 1932, the Civil War in 1937, and contemporary Spain in 2017. The film tells the story of three men whose fates are bound together by themes of sexuality and desire, pain and inheritance. The title refers to an unfinished work by Federico García Lorca, which runs as a thread throughout the narrative.

"When we were making this film, I kept asking myself the same question: am I doing justice to those who came before us? Working on this film, I understood that the only way to honour the suffering, the silence, and the deaths of LGBTIQ+ people of previous generations is to ensure that the next generations live more freely," said Javier Ambrossi as he accepted the award.

After its first screening, the film received a 20-minute standing ovation. According to the specialist outlet Deadline, this is the second-longest ovation in the festival's history. Only Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" was applauded for longer — in 2006, audiences held the film for 22 minutes.

"La Bola Negra" will be released in Spanish cinemas on 2 October.

The festival's top prize — the Palme d'Or — went to "Fjord" by Cristian Mungiu. The Grand Prix was awarded to "Minotaur" by Andrei Zvyagintsev.