The hit Spanish film set to challenge The Odyssey at the Oscars

Miguel Bernardeau plays Lorca’s bereaved lover. Rafael Rodriguez Rapun really existed; he was a mining engineer, top footballer and arts enthusiast who met Lorca when he joined his anarchist theatre troupe, La Barraca. After Lorca was murdered, Rapun joined the Republican forces. Although every Spanish schoolchild learns Lorca’s poems and is aware of his literary importance, Bernardeau says nobody was taught anything about his personal life. “Which I think for an artist like him is very important. So this was a rediscovery of his work for me.”

Bernardeau says the film has landed at a crucial time in Spain, where a resurgent extreme Right is now trying to reclaim General Francisco Franco as a hero. Liberal Spaniards, he believes, have been caught off guard. There has been so little discussion of the war or its aftermath until now, because when democracy was restored in 1977 most people wanted to draw a line under those decades. All that mattered was a brighter future. “I am now conscious, having studied more about the war and that specific part of our history, how much we wanted to leave it in the past, not observe it or learn from it,” he says. “We didn’t work through the transition with any consciousness of what had happened.”

A general election has just been announced in Spain, to take place in on November 29. This makes it an interesting time, Bernardeau says, to watch La Bola Negra. “The topic is very divisive, and this movie is awakening that kind of conversation. Polarisation is not good, but we need to create that conversation between different sides. And this movie, because of the emotions it creates and because it doesn’t tell you what to think, creates conversations between people that they probably wouldn’t have at home. If we stop talking to each other, we are done. We are done! And I think that is the beautiful side of this movie.”

La Bola Negra is in Australian cinemas from October 15 (except for Perth, where it will be released on December 10).

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