It might be a tad too early for Oscar predictions, but La Bola Negra is already making a rather persuasive case for itself. Christopher Nolan’s colossal The Odyssey remains the obvious film to beat in the early Best Picture conversation. Yet, Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s Spanish-language drama has begun to build the kind of momentum that has awards-season pundits paying closer attention. The question now is whether that momentum can translate into industry support that turns a very promising contender into a genuine Best Picture threat.
La Bola Negra just won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, adding to its shared Best Director prize at Cannes in May, and Spain has selected it as the country’s official submission for Best International Feature Film. Netflix, which acquired the film after Cannes, will give it a 47-day US theatrical run beginning October 16 before releasing it on the streaming service on December 2.
A still from ‘La Bola Negra’
| Photo Credit:
Netflix
The TIFF victory is extremely significant because of the award’s record as an Oscar precursor. Since 2008, 16 of 18 TIFF People’s Choice winners have gone on to receive Best Picture nominations. Five of those films, Slumdog Millionaire, The King’s Speech, 12 Years a Slave, Green Book and Nomadland, subsequently won Best Picture. The only TIFF winner in that period to miss the Best Picture lineup in the last decade was 2024’s The Life of Chuck, which did not receive a substantial awards campaign.
Since 2008, eight films that finished as TIFF’s first runner-up received Best Picture nominations: Argo, Philomena, Lion, Roma, Marriage Story, The Power of the Dog, Women Talking, and The Holdovers. The second runner-up record is also notable, with Spotlight, Call Me by Your Name, Roma, Parasite, The Power of the Dog, and Anora subsequently making the Best Picture lineup. Spotlight, Parasite, and Anora went on to win the top prize at the Oscars.
Despite the history, La Bola Negra isn’t a statistical lock, especially this early in the season. But it gives the film an advantage. TIFF is one of the few major festivals where a large general audience, and not an industry jury, decides the award. Its recent winners include Nomadland, Belfast, The Fabelmans, American Fiction, and 2025’s Hamnet. Nine Best Picture winners have emerged from TIFF’s People’s Choice history since 2000.
La Bola Negra also has the Cannes pedigree that TIFF alone cannot provide. Calvo and Ambrossi, collectively known as Los Javis, shared Cannes’ Best Director award with Paweł Pawlikowski for Fatherland. The film connects three stories set in 1932, 1937 and 2017, with Federico García Lorca and his unfinished play La Bola Negra providing a historical and literary link between the periods. The cast includes Penélope Cruz, Glenn Close, Lola Dueñas, Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González, and singer-songwriter Guitarricadelafuente in his acting debut.
A still from ‘La Bola Negra’
| Photo Credit:
Netflix
AwardsWatch‘s September Best Picture forecast illustrates the film’s current position. All four of its Oscar analysts place The Odyssey at No. 1, but two rank La Bola Negra second and the other two place it third. More significantly, all four include Calvo and Ambrossi in their five Best Director predictions, with three placing the pair second. That gives La Bola Negra one of the strongest director-to-picture alignments among the early contenders.
The film also has several plausible routes into the major categories beyond Best Picture and Director. Its screenplay is consistently appearing in early Adapted Screenplay forecasts, even as Penélope Cruz has emerged as a serious Supporting Actress contender, giving the film two potentially important above-the-line and acting nominations. Veteran Oscar nominee Glenn Close also features in the ensemble.
The Academy’s new rules make this year’s acting race a bit unconventional. For the first time, an actor can receive multiple nominations in the same acting category if multiple performances place among the top five in voting. The Academy has also increased the maximum number of Casting statuettes from two to three. The changes could affect how campaigns are structured across a crowded acting field, although they do not guarantee any particular outcome for La Bola Negra.
The film also has several plausible craft categories. Its period settings, three-era structure, and large ensemble give it potential routes in Production Design, Costume Design, Cinematography, Film Editing, Sound, and Casting, while its musical elements make it a strong contender in the Original Score and Song categories. Its awards campaign therefore has the breadth that Best Picture contenders generally need, with recognition potentially accumulating across several branches rather than relying on just a couple high-profile nominations.
A still from ‘La Bola Negra’
| Photo Credit:
Netflix
The International Feature race is already looking considerably more competitive, with La Bola Negra currently holding the strongest position across the major prediction trackers. The competition is stacked: Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden has the pedigree of a previous International Feature winner with Drive My Car, Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winner Fjord has the most significant Cannes prize of the group, Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love has the Netflix campaign behind it, and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur remains a highly regarded auteur contender. Current forecasts generally place those four closest to La Bola Negra, making International Feature one of the more closely contested races heading into the festival and precursor season.
The major obstacle remains The Odyssey. Christopher Nolan’s film is currently the unanimous No. 1 Best Picture prediction among many analysts, and Nolan is likewise the unanimous No. 1 Director prediction. The film has the scale, commercial profile, technical breadth, and auteur status that traditionally help large productions accumulate nominations across multiple Academy branches.
Behind those two, the field remains unsettled. Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine is another major festival contender, while Project Hail Mary offers Amazon MGM a large-scale commercial film with substantial awards potential. Dune: Part Three, The Debut, The Invite, I Play Rocky, All of a Sudden and Elsinore also appear across multiple Best Picture forecasts.
The recent history of the Academy gives La Bola Negra a relevant precedent. Parasite became the first non-English-language film to win Best Picture, while Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest, and The Secret Agent have demonstrated in recent Oscar cycles that films outside the English-language mainstream can seriously compete directly for Best Picture. Still, Bong Joon Ho’s 2019 victory remains the only non-English-language Best Picture win in Oscar history. Seven years on, it is fair to wonder how long Hollywood intends to treat that singular breakthrough as sufficient evidence of its international credentials to satisfy its cosmopolitan conscience.
It might be useful to add a little Oscar history to the Nolan angle here. Every completed decade from the 1930s through the 2010s produced at least one repeat Best Director winner, from Frank Capra in the 1930s through Alejandro González Iñárritu in the 2010s; the Academy’s own records document that long-running pattern. Nolan, having already won for Oppenheimer, is now making a fairly formidable case to become the 2020s’ repeat winner too. That makes the prospect of Los Javis’ queer Spanish film knocking Nolan and his increasingly formidable auteur-industrial complex off the Oscar throne especially delicious.
For La Bola Negra, the next test is whether its festival momentum converts into industry recognition. A strong showing with the guilds, particularly PGA, DGA, SAG, and WGA, would provide substantially stronger evidence of a Best Picture win than what festival awards can provide on their own. For now, The Odyssey remains ahead in the consensus forecasts, but La Bola Negra has accumulated Cannes recognition, a major TIFF audience award, Spain’s International Feature submission, strong reviews, a Netflix theatrical campaign, and plausible nominations across several major categories. At this point in the season, it is the film with the clearest statistical and precursor-based argument for challenging The Odyssey at the top of the 2027 Oscar race.
Preliminary Oscar voting begins December 7, shortlists are announced December 15, nominations voting runs January 11-15, nominations are announced January 21, and final voting takes place February 25-March 4. The ceremony is scheduled for March 14, 2027.
