La Bola Negra

What happens when a young Spanish folk singer, whose music takes inspiration from the songs of his grandparents’ generation, stars in a queer epic film set during the Spanish Civil War? Well, for starters it wins the People’s Choice Award at TIFF 2026. And one thing I find very special about the Official Trailer for La Bola Negra, is that it uses as its soundtrack “La Nieve,” a song written and recorded by the film’s star, Álvaro Lafuente, who goes by the stage name Guitarricadelafuente, and plays the role of Spanish Civil War soldier Sebastián who is discovering his identity as a gay man.

The trailer opens with a close-up of a black ball being cast as a ballot in a voting process in a homophobic men’s club in 1930s Spain. At 0:04, we hear solo piano presenting a subtle ¾ melody in a minor key, as we meet Alberto, who in 2017 is researching the history of queer culture in Spain, in one of three narratives that are interwoven in the film.

At 0:16 the vocals from the song “La Nieve” come in and we hear Guitarricadelafuente singing about an Andalusian relic (“reliquia, imperio andaluz”). La Bola Negra explores the story behind an unfinished play of the same name by Andalusian playwright Federico García Lorca.

At 0:37 we see and hear Isabelle (Glenn Close) mention Lorca’s play La Bola Negra to Alberto, and at that moment a string orchestra is added to the score, as the singing pauses. At 0:49 there’s a nice audio-visual synching of a black ball clinking in time with the music. At 0:56, after the camera has lingered for an extra measure on two men gazing into each other’s eyes, Guitarricadelafuente’s vocals return. Now, over shots of soldiers walking across breathtaking landscapes, and shots of the blossoming romance between Sebastián and Rafael (Miguel Bernardeau), the lyrics tell of a thousand fires burning (“donde arden mil fuegos”).

The next lyric line ends with the phrase “es mi cruz” (“it’s my cross”), heard at 1:10, and then at 1:12 we see the trailer’s first shot of entertainer Nené Romero, played by Penélope Cruz (you see what they did there: “es mi cruz” to segue to Penélope Cruz?).

We’re past the halfway mark in the trailer now and the following montage, to be expected, shows clips of some of the film’s outstanding cinematography and dramatic acting. Noticeably here, from 1:20-1:40, unlike many of today’s trailers, the picture cuts do not happen in time with the music, but instead jump sporadically from scene to scene, disconnected from the pace of the music. Guitarricadelafuente’s vocals continue here, punctuated by frequent cymbal rolls. There‘s even a brief shot of a marching band playing (1:33), and Guitarricadelafuente is there playing trumpet, but the clip doesn’t last long enough for a casual listener to notice that the band on screen is playing a different song.

At 1:40 we see a woman pouring a case of black balls down a staircase, and at that moment the orchestra and vocals end suddenly and we return to the solo piano heard at the start of the trailer. The trailer is all but finished, and it closes with a special title card naming the Guitarricadelafuente song used in this trailer (“La Nieve”).

It’s a powerful trailer, with subtle and clever connections between the lyrics and the visuals on screen, almost as if Lafuente wrote this song as a score to this particular trailer. Whether or not that was the creation process for this trailer, I definitely can’t remember the last time I saw a trailer whose soundtrack was a beautiful ballad written by the film’s star.

Power to you, Guitarricadelafuente!

La Bola Negra is in theatres October 16th.

— Jack Hui Litster