Oozing panache and bagging awards already, La Bola Negra is an eye-popping war and prejudice epic starring Penélope Cruz in a blond wig and Glenn Close speaking Spanish. We meet the ex-lovers who dreamed it up

When Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo – the directing duo known in their native Spain as “Los Javis” – began writing their queer epic La Bola Negra, they weren’t thinking about whether it would be stylish (which it is) or win numerous awards (which it has) or capture what they refer to as “the anti-fascist zeitgeist” (which it does). Instead, they thought only of scale. “I’m done with LGBTQ+ movies being niche,” says Ambrossi. “I was like, ‘Let’s make the biggest, gayest war movie ever.’” Job done.

At Cannes this year, the best director prize was awarded jointly to them and to Paweł Pawlikowski, who made the Thomas Mann road trip film Fatherland. La Bola Negra is now an Oscars frontrunner, with best picture and best director nominations all but guaranteed. Brimming with panache, the movie darts back and forth between three stories set in Spain: in 1932, a young man applying for membership of an exclusive casino is rejected on the grounds of his suspected homosexuality; in 1937, a callow nationalist soldier develops tender feelings for the injured republican prisoner under his watch; and in 2017, a queer historian inherits an unfinished story by Federico García Lorca. That story lends the movie its title and provides the thread that sews its strands together.

New film Fatherland took Sandra Hüller back to a divided Germany. She talks about damaged dreams, Hollywood feelgood and - just maybe - appearing in the new Marvel movie

Sandra Hüller is crying, and it feels very strange. A wildly gifted actor, she can convey every human emotion there is. On screen, though, she is most often asked to embody deep self-possession. Even doing karaoke, Hüller is in control. And in real life, life is good. Her 2026 will end with four high-profile movies this year alone. Two (Fatherland and Rose) are black-and-white arthouse films that centre on her brilliance, and though one of the others (Digger) is already a Hollywood cautionary tale, a second (Project Hail Mary) was a giant $684m hit. (There may also be a fifth movie, bigger still. We will come back to that.)

And yet, dressed in film star black, she is in tears. “This is really hard for me,” she says.