Toronto Film Festival: “La Bola Negra” and “Elsinore” on their way to the Oscars

In the endurance race that is Hollywood awards season, which culminates in March with the Oscars, it's always good to start with the wind in your sails. This is the case of the English biopic Elsinore and the gay fresco La Bola Negra. These two feature films won the audience award at the Toronto Film Festival on Sunday. The winners, chosen by spectators at the Canadian event, regularly receive nominations for the Oscars, which they sometimes convert into statuettes. Last year, the Toronto Film Festival launched the successful trajectory of Hamnet (Oscar for best actress for Jessie Buckley).

Already very noticed at the Cannes Film Festival, where Park Chan-wook's jury awarded it the directing prize, La Bola Negra, an intimate fresco of the queer world through Spanish history, won the first prize at the Toronto Film Festival on Sunday, a consecration for this LGBT feature film which will represent Spain at the Oscars. With this Canadian trophy, it becomes the favorite for the best international film category. France's candidate, the film by Russian dissident Andreï Zviaguintsev Minotaure, will not have an easy time.

Distributed in the United States by Netflix, known for its aggressive campaigns, La Bola Negra can hope to garner nominations in general categories, such as the prestigious best film and best director. Enough to overshadow the current darlings of The Odyssey and the political satire Wild Horse Nine, awarded in Venice.

Directed by the Spanish duo Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, nicknamed “the Javis”, La Bola Negra crosses several pivotal eras through the intertwined destinies of three homosexuals and back and forths in time. The 2h35 film, which will be released in French cinemas on December 16, portrays gay love stifled by shame and secrecy. First that of a young man rejected in 1932 from a select club because of his homosexuality, then the birth of desire between two enemy soldiers in the middle of the Spanish Civil War and finally the quest for truth of a young historian in 2017. Spanish superstar Penélope Cruz makes a notable appearance as a cabaret dancer.

On the second and third step of the podium for the Toronto public are I Play Rocky, behind the scenes of the cult film and the discovery of a young Sylvester Stallone, and another biopic Being Heumann, which tells the fight for the rights of people with disabilities by the famous American activist Judy Heumann.