La bola negra

In 1932 Granada, Carlos, a young man from a wealthy family, is refused membership of an exclusive social club after its members vote against his admission using a blackball ballot because of rumours about his homosexuality. His father, Vicente, urges him to deny the rumours and seek admission again. His sister, Valentina, describes the restrictions she faces as a woman, while his mother suggests that he leave for Madrid. In a club at night, Carlos dances to a seguiriya and encounters a mourning elderly woman who identifies him as her missing son, but Carlos flees afterwards. He appeals to the club's committee and, when questioned, denies being homosexual. In the wake of the botched Sanjurjada, the Casino is stormed by a mob. After the building is destroyed and covered in snow, Carlos escapes using the painters' scaffolding and walks up a snowy mountain, where he encounters a boy with a young woman and a group of skiers and is addressed by the personified Snow, whose voice is that of the elderly woman he met earlier. In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, Sebastián, a young village trumpeter, survives an attack by Italian aircraft on a community preparing to welcome them. His mother is killed. After fleeing the attack, he is forced to join the Nationalist forces to survive. He is assigned to guard Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, a wounded Republican prisoner of war, and obtain information from him. Rafael had belonged to Federico García Lorca's theatre company, La Barraca, and had been the poet's lover. As Sebastián gets to know Rafael, his homosexual desire is aroused, bonding closer with the prisoner for whom he has been assigned as a custodian. Rafael introduces him to Lorca's poetry. Nené Romero, a popular cupletista entertaining the troops, acquaints with Sebastián and introduces him to queer role models such as Edmond de Bries. As a last request Rafael asks Sebastián to recover a manuscript of Lorca's play La bola negra from an appartment in Alcalá 96 and preserve it. Rafael is taken with other prisoners for a summary execution (paseo), and Sebastián is placed in the firing squad, killing Rafael. Sebastián survives the war and retrieves the manuscript, although dropping a few of the pages on the floor. In 2017, Alberto López Azcuna, a historian and former playwright, is researching queer dissidence in the music of Rosa Eskenazi while visiting Athens. His estranged maternal grandfather dies and leaves him an inheritance should he meet a lawyer in Cantabria. In Madrid, Alberto lives with Juan Pablo. Alberto struggles to communicate with his mother, Teresa, who resents her father's abandonment of her. Alberto's part of the inheritance turns out to be the remaining manuscript of La bola negra, believed to have been left unfinished by Lorca. He investigates its origins and seeks the help of Lorca scholar Isabelle Durand. Alberto's grandfather is revealed to be Sebastián, who went on to live in the countryside with another man while allowing the villagers to believe that they were cousins. Although estranged from his family, Sebastián followed Alberto's theatrical career from a distance, attending a performance and keeping press cuttings. Alberto meets his grandfather's surviving partner, who tells him that Sebastián would have been proud of him. Isabelle confirms the manuscript's authenticity, and Alberto and Teresa begin to reconcile.

Plot from La bola negraCC BY-SA 4.0