The Black Ball, by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi; The Beloved, by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, and Sundays, by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, are the three films preselected by the Spanish Academy of Cinema for the race for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film. After this first screening, the Spanish academics will vote again until the 15th. On Wednesday, September 16, the finally chosen title will be announced.
Actress Miriam Garlo, Goya winner for Deaf; read the trio in the presence of the notary and the president of the Academy, Fernando Méndez-Leite. Last year the preselected trio was composed of Sirât, by Oliver Laxe, Romería, by Carla Simón, and Deaf, by Eva Libertad. The Spanish representative was finally Sirât, which managed to be a candidate for Best International Feature Film and Sound. Spain has not won this statuette since The Sea Inside, by Alejandro Amenábar, in 2004. In the last edition, this award was won by Norway with Sentimental Value, by Joachim Trier.
Sundays, by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, has had an impressive career, both artistically and commercially, since its premiere at the last San Sebastián festival, where it irrefutably won the Golden Shell. At the Goyas it won four statuettes: Best Film, Direction, Original Screenplay, Leading Actress (Patricia López Arnaiz) and Supporting Actress (Nagore Aranburu). In theaters it has grossed almost five million euros.
The trigger for Sundays comes from a 17-year-old girl, from an upper-middle-class Bilbao family and educated in a religious school, who announces to those around her that she wants to become a nun and seclude herself in a cloistered convent. Her relatives react in very different ways, projecting their own fears and opinions onto her, ranging from tortuously respecting her free will to warning her of possible indoctrination: sect or religion? Faith or manipulation?
In the newly renovated auditorium of the Academy was almost the entire technical team of Sundays, led by its creator, Ruiz de Azúa. The filmmaker said: “We are not very much about expectations, but we embrace what comes. Now it seems easy, but a year ago, finishing the editing, it seemed crazy.” One of her producers, Marisa Fernández Armenteros, spoke of a “pleasant journey,” and that it had been a long time since a film that had won the Goya entered the shortlist afterwards. “We feel it is a very beloved film, it is still alive.” The director and screenwriter is already writing, together with Eduard Sola, her next project, a series about the digital platform Onlyfans.
The Black Ball, the only one of this preselection that has not yet reached commercial cinemas —it will on September 25—, by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, the Javis, won the Best Direction award at the last Cannes festival. The drama weaves the shadow of Federico García Lorca with homosexuality in the last 100 years in Spain, as three stories from three eras, 1932, 1937, and 2017, intersect to unite and make sense at the end. As its creators said in Cannes: “Lorca is not a chimera, he is not an idea, he was a person. And Federico García Lorca was murdered for being gay. It is very important to claim that history is not a line of text; history, as the Hispanist played by Glenn Close says, is people.” Alongside Close, the other star appearing in the feature film is Penélope Cruz, who plays the cupletista Nené Romero. Although the weight of the action is carried, in different eras, by the musician and actor Guitarricadelafuente, Milo Quifes, and Carlos González. By the way, Guitarricadelafuente and musician Raül Refree have already passed another screening in another Oscar category: their song The Snow is registered and accepted for the Best Original Song statuette. In the United States, its distribution is handled by Netflix, which has already announced that it will premiere it in theaters before its streaming release, and that it will fully support it.
The Javis have confirmed that they will continue filming together, even though they have separated emotionally, and that they are already eager to start their next project, “in English and Spanish.” And in the promotion, they emphasized the political charge of the film, which draws from both auteur cinema and the epic of The English Patient or Titanic. “When we were directing, I kept asking myself if I was honoring those who came before me, and I realized that the only way to honor the suffering, silence, and death of the LGTBIQ+ people who preceded us is by ensuring that the next generations have more freedom.” The script partly originates from the play The Dark Stone, by Alberto Conejero, and from the notes García Lorca left of the play The Black Ball.
From Los Angeles, Ambrossi, Calvo, and actor Carlos González, who connected at two in the morning their time, thanked “the voters who have believed in this film.” They mentioned, besides the two titles completing the shortlist, Pedro Almodóvar, whose Bitter Christmas was not preselected. “He would have been here with equal merit.” Ambrossi confirmed that they have been promoting The Black Ball in the US since summer. For Calvo, “it is impressive how much the film is liked here,” and he emphasized: “They are interested in Federico, they are interested in the story. You can tell the Cannes Best Director award matters, because, for us two, it was a great encouragement.” This success has helped Calvo “to keep embracing the unknown.”
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The Beloved, by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, like The Black Ball, also went through the Competition section of the last Cannes festival. Javier Bardem and Victoria Luengo portray on screen a father, a film director, two-time Oscar winner, who returns from New York to Madrid to shoot a story about the Sahara in Spain, and the daughter of his first partner, a former actress turned waitress, whom he has not seen for 13 years, a very painful abandonment for her. Bardem and Luengo met once, eight months before filming, and then did not see each other again, to maintain that distance, until the first day they filmed the family reunion in a restaurant that opens the film.
Both Sorogoyen and his co-writer, Isabel Peña, pointed out before its release, just two weeks ago, in Spanish theaters: “You should not mix or confuse cinema and life. The Beloved talks about both things, which was what we wanted at the start of our adventure. When we finished The Beasts and thought about what film we wanted to make next, we decided to move away a bit from the thriller and do something much closer to us. We wanted to tell a story about people and relationships, about wounds, family, and the past.” All three films are originals from Movistar Plus.
From Barcelona, where he is attending screenings with Q&A sessions open to the general public, Sorogoyen, who was already in a shortlist with The Beasts and whose short film The Mother was Oscar-nominated in its category, commented: “This is the icing on a very good release. People come very close to talk to us with it and that success at the box office makes us very happy.” In 10 days it has already surpassed one million euros in theaters.
Many countries have publicized their chosen film. Romania sends Fjord, by Cristian Mungiu, which was already classified with the new rule that winners of certain festivals enter the race, and this drama is the latest Cannes Palme d’Or; Chile to The Thaw, by Manuela Martelli; Japan, to Drive My Car, by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi; Germany, to Everytime, by Sandra Woller; Israel, to Our Loves, by Avi Nesher; Belgium, to Coward, by Lukas Dhont; South Korea, to Possible Love, by master Lee Chang-dong; Austria, to Rose, by Markus Schleinzer; Switzerland, to the documentary about Gaza Who Is Still Alive, by Nicolas Wadimoff; Ireland, to Aontas, by Damian McCann; Thailand, to 9 Temples to Heaven, by Sompot Chidgasornpongse; Canada, to Nina Rozas, by Geneviève Dulude-De Celles; and Mexico, to On the Road, by David Pablos. By the way, Mexico has resolved two selections at once, and at the same time announced that Flies, by Fernando Eimbcke, is its selection for the Goyas. In general, these are titles that have started their career at major festivals, especially Cannes.
Each country selects the film that will represent it at the Hollywood awards. In Spain, there are these two screenings. In France, a committee meets and those responsible for the preselected titles defend their worth in this competition before it. In Germany, there is a jury. In other countries, voting is direct or the state body in charge of cinema simply announces the preselected film. There are many different processes.
Germany has placed three films in this screening in this category, thanks to the new rule by which winners of some festivals chosen by the Hollywood Academy automatically qualify. Alongside Everytime, it already has the German-Turkish Yellow Letters, by İlker Çatak, because it won the Golden Bear at the last Berlinale, and Shame and Money, by Visar Morina, because it took the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.
In early November, the Hollywood Academy will publish the list of all films in this category —last year there were 86— and on December 15 the 15 films preselected for Best International Feature Film will be announced. The five nominated titles will be known on January 21, 2027; and the 99th Academy Awards ceremony will be held on March 14, 2027, hosted by Conan O’Brien.
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