Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi's La Bola Negra is the audience favorite of the 70th BFI London Film Festival. The British Film Institute revealed the Audience Award for Best Feature Film on Wednesday, more than two weeks after the festival closed Oct. 18, Deadline reported.
The Spanish-language drama from the directing duo known as Los Javis stars Guitarricadelafuente, Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González, Milo Quifes, Penélope Cruz, Lola Dueñas and Glenn Close. It moves between 1932, 1937 and 2017, following three men whose stories are tied to the legacy of Federico García Lorca, the Spanish poet and playwright who was murdered in 1936. The title comes from an unfinished Lorca work.
A run built on audience votes
London is the latest stop in a festival season that has leaned heavily on public ballots. La Bola Negra took the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, a prize long watched as an early Oscar signal, after Calvo and Ambrossi shared the best director award at Cannes with Paweł Pawlikowski for Fatherland. Spain has submitted the film for the best international feature Oscar, and Deadline reports it has crossed $43 million at the global box office. Netflix, which acquired the film out of Cannes, begins streaming it in the U.S. and Canada on Dec. 2. The Gotham Film & Media Institute will also present the film's team with its Vanguard Tribute at the Gotham Awards on Nov. 30.
The festival's second audience prize, Best British Discovery, went to Grace Harper Brighouse's documentary Dependence, which uses home movies the filmmaker shot from childhood into adulthood to examine her estrangement from her father during his OxyContin addiction.
The juried awards were handed out at the close of the festival. Sergei Loznitsa's Imperium won Best Film from an Official Competition jury led by Oscar-nominated documentarian Sam Pollard, Sompot Chidgasornpongse's 9 Temples to Heaven won Best First Feature and Asmahan Bkerat's Concrete Land won Best Documentary.
For viewers who follow Spanish-language cinema, the London win keeps one of the year's most visible non-English titles in the awards conversation heading into precursor season. Read Cup of Soul's TIFF review of La Bola Negra, our report on its Hamptons International Film Festival win and our breakdown of the 2026 Gotham Awards nominations.
