Federico García Lorca only ever wrote four pages of it. Four. A novel called La bola negra, which took its name from a very Granadian custom: when someone hoped to join a club and wasn't wanted, a black ball was dropped into the urn. He was murdered in 1936 and the book stayed like that — four pages and a title.

Ninety years later, Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi have finished reading those pages. They have made a 159-minute film out of them, written with the playwright Alberto Conejero — who had already touched this wound in La piedra oscura — and shot on 35mm film. At Cannes they won Best Director. It played Perlak, in San Sebastián. And it is the film Spain is sending to the Oscars.

La bola negra follows three men across three different eras — 1932, 1937 and 2017 — braiding their lives together until it is hard to say where one ends and the next begins. It is about desire, about pain, and about what gets inherited without ever having been asked for.

It stars Guitarricadelafuente, in his acting debut, Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González, Milo Quifes, Lola Dueñas, Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close. Music by Raül Refree, cinematography by Gris Jordana.

Friday 25 September, 7pm, we are screening it simultaneously in three screens. Afterwards, in all three, there will be a recorded Q&A.

Screen 1 and Screen 2 are sold out. That is why we have opened a new session in Screen 3, with tickets available here.