After surpassing 4 million spectators in Spain and nearing 30 million euros at the box office, The Black Ball also triumphs in the United States. The film by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi has become the second-best limited opening for a Netflix non-English-language film in North American cinemas. Largely due to the intense promotion being carried out by the directors and the cast, led by Miguel Bernardeau and Guitarricadelafuente.
Both have graced the latest cover of Variety and shone among Hollywood stars during the Academy Museum Gala. The Benicàssim singer is courted by festivals and media, and it is increasingly common to see him give interviews to the international press. One of the latest was given by Guitarricadelafuente to Netflix’s official Tudum Magazine, in which he reviewed the entire process that led him to debut in cinema under the direction of Los Javis.
The singer, whose real name is Álvaro Lafuente, plays Sebastián in The Black Ball, a soldier on the Nationalist side. “I question the level of heroism he has. In the end, he is a naive boy who has been handed a rifle and must carry out a mission,” he reflects during the interview, which took place in Barcelona shortly before the promotion of the film began. Two nights earlier, he was on stage during the tour for his second album, Spanish Leather.
Amid this musical odyssey, he stopped in the Côte d’Azur, where he posed with the film’s cast at the Cannes Film Festival and received a long ovation. “While I was watching it there, I wasn’t conscious of anything,” recalls Guitarricadelafuente about that moment. “It was the first time I saw myself playing a character in a movie, and seeing it on the big Cannes screen was something I couldn’t believe.”
From Music to the Big Screen
Although music has always been his great passion, the seventh art has always been present in his life. “I remember that every Sunday I used to go to the cinema with my parents or some friends. It was the best part of the week. I remember we watched Talk to Her, by Pedro Almodóvar, and in French class they showed us one by Godard. That was my first deep contact with cinema, in which I could appreciate it from an aesthetic point of view.”
Guitarricadelafuente, in The Black Ball.
In 2024, while performing at Primavera Sound alongside pop star Troye Sivan, the directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi were in the audience. That night, after the concert, Guitarricadelafuente bumped into the directors, who spoke to him about a project they thought he might be suitable for. “I imagined they were going to propose a soundtrack, something related to music,” the singer says, who shortly after that initial meeting traveled to Madrid to visit Los Javis and continue the conversation. “Instead, they told me about an idea.”
The directors had imagined Sebastián as a man with “eyes of a sad musician.” And a mere minute on screen with Guitarrica is enough to see that they chose the right person. “For me, there were many things that matched what I had been exploring: self-identification, feeling comfortable in your own skin, the meaning of Spanish symbols and how to turn them to your advantage, fragile masculinity, showing strength in vulnerability,” he explains about his character in The Black Ball and the parallels with himself.
Penélope Cruz in The Black Ball.
When asked about the scenes he shot with Penélope Cruz, he says that “in Spain, I think for everyone, she is someone you have only seen on a pedestal. When I met her, the first time we read the script together, I was very nervous,” he says. And he speaks with great tenderness about the experience of working with her on her debut in cinema: “She has been very generous from the start, she has helped me a lot. In real life, and with Sebastián, she has been like a maternal figure.”
The Significance of The Black Ball
Having already released The Black Ball and with the Oscars on the horizon, the process now begins for Guitarricadelafuente to reflect on this important new chapter of his life. “I think it’s something gigantic, and that this is happening in Spain… When I was a child, there weren’t many references like this on television or in cinema. I wish I could have seen this movie when I was little,” he says. “This role was so deep, so exhausting, so wearing. I believe that when I do something—a song, an album—I give it my all. And I feel that I have done so in this film. A part of me has stayed there.”
“Now is the time to slow down and let inspiration reach him again. “I have always needed to be alone, to take my time and write. These last two years have been the busiest of my life, and I really haven’t been able to do it,” he reflects on all that has happened during this period. “But I still have the need to go to the sea, or to my grandparents’ hometown in Aragon, to pause, analyze what is happening and try to focus on the music, write lyrics, read and get inspired.”
