10 Huelva Festival Standouts From ‘La Bola Negra’ to a Vibrant ‘Funk’ Musical and the Latest from ‘Dive’ Director Lucía Puenzo

Look at the U.S. summer box office and beyond. ‘The Odyssey’ is a film made for the public, but from a personal vision, as indeed is ‘La Bola Negra,’” says Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival Director Manuel H. Martín.

This year’s 52nd edition indeed screens “La Bola Negra,” as well as “The Beloved,” in a catch-up Accent Cine Español panorama in a year when Spanish cinema has never had it so good, fielding three titles in Cannes main competition: Pedro Almodóvar’s “Bitter Christmas, “Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s “The Beloved” and “La Bola Negra.”

Talento Andaluz frames two notable doc features from an active regional documentary film scene.

Above all, its 12-title main competition, spotlights notable Latin America debuts and the latest from directors who have stood out for their auteurist personality, social concerns and crossover style, the kind of films Huelva loves to program.

Variety profiles some of this year’s standouts:

“After Elena” “Después de Elena,” ( Shawn Garry, Cine Matriz, Doc: Co, Creative Content, Italy’s Zoe Films, Fundacion Rio and By Lace Films, Chile, Colombia, Italy)

A dark absurdist comedy, Toronto 2026 world premiere and Garry’s second feature following on “Desierto Sur,” here starring Alfredo Castro, a Pablo Larraín go-to actor and Nicolás Zárate, attracting heat after “Red Hanger.” Castro’s Roberto, 70, wants nothing more than to retreat into his family home after wife Elena’s death, but is forced to take in his three adult children and offspring. In their comically halting reconnection, Roberto finds a way to navigate grief. Castro plays against type, abandoning the “heightened performances I’m used to” for “strict, grounded realism,” he told Variety. Gabriela Sandoval produces out of her Cine Matriz label.

“Anguita. El Hombre de los Tres Siglos,” (Hugo Cabezas,

Spain)

An admirably and intensely crafted doc-feature portrait of Julio Anguita, a first communist Mayor of Cordoba (1978-86), president of Izquierda Unida (1987-2000), a national left-wing anti-capitalist alliance and third political force in Spain in the 1990s. This is a intimate, tempered and nuanced portrait of an orator, a man of elegance, humanity and a virtue, which was also for his critics his major failing: His intransigences, his unwillingness to dessert principles in polices, whatever the political gain. Directed by Hugo Cabezas (“Atín Aya,” “Últimas unidades”), mixing testimony and archival footage, produced by Seville-based La Favorita, backed by pubcaster RTVA.

“The Beloved,” (“El ser querido,” Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Spain, France)

Though “La Bola Negra” was this year’s Cannes sensation, among other Cannes main competition films, “The Beloved” still rated for its fans as one of the strongest. “Bardem is powerful as a filmmaker directing his estranged daughter in Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s making-of-a-movie drama,” said Variety. It is also Sorogoyen’s most daring film to date, slicing and dicing the central story of a father-daughter re-encounter from multiple character POVs, so dazzling different formats, where father and daughter battle through to some sort of agreement to a common story about the past and present. Like “La Bola Negra” and “‘Sirāt,” part of Movistar Plus’ first movie slate, giving directors budgets to make the movie they need to tell. And it tell in the results.

“La Bola Negra,” (Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, Spain-France)

“I want to do an LGBTQ+ movie for everyone and to be the gayest, biggest war movie ever,” co-director Javier Ambrossi told Variety co-editor in chief Ramin Setoodeh at last week’s Miami FiLm Festival. Los Javis may have done just that, moreover. The Cannes Festival’s most prominent Oscar hopeful, the big question about “La Bola Negra” is how far it can go, in Academy Award nominations and wins and box office in Spain, where its €38.5 million ($42.75 million) and counting makes it the third highest-grossing Spanish movie in Spain in history. Netflix’s Dec. 2 bow will add further global resonance to the milestone title.

“Funk,” (Ali Muritiba, Brazil)

A “revolutionary film,” says Muritiba, centering “Black joy” in a musical where there are no gunshots. That’s not to say the film doesn’t show any suffering. Sassy, smart, talented, sexually uninhibited on stage in her MC Sabrina persona, Sabrina (Duda Santos) dreams of making it in the world of Brazilian funk. Her success comes at large personal sacrifice, however. A brainchild of major Brazilian producer-director Hector Dhalia (“Adrift,” “Criminal Code”), producer Manoel Rangel and Muritiba, pursuing a through line with other movies from the director set on an axis of loneliness and desire,Variety notes.

“Gugu’s World,” (Allan Deberton, Brazil)

“A radiant queer coming-of-age charmer from Brazil,” Variety saidin its review of Allan Deberton’s “generous character study” of a queer pre-teen, turning on Gugu, 12, and his relationship with his grandmother, increasingly afflicted by dementia. “Gugu’s World” walked off with a 2026 Berlin KPlus Generation jury prize. Drawing more heat, it now figures as Brazil’s Intl. Feature Film Oscar entry, announced after Huelva zeroed in on the film for competition says Martín. Produced by Brazil’s Biônica Filmes through Projeto Paradiso’s Incubator initiative and sold by M-Appeal which cherrypicks sales on some of the best films in Latin American cinema.

“Julia’s Flowers,” (“Las Flores De Julia,” Cris Tapia Marchiori, Argentina, Chile)

Shot in a completely different register to Tapia Marchiori’s one-shot “Gunman,” screened at IFF Rotterdam, “Julia’s Flower” weighs in as a quiet daughter-mother acceptance melodrama. In it, Julia returns to her home village as Álvaro, aged 17, to hand over power of attorney over her gravely ailing mother (Paulina Garcia). Set in the vast lakes and rugged rocky mountains of Mendoza, a midlife identity tale framed by the performances of transexual actress Mariana Genesio Peña and Paulina García. Humor-laced, mellow, its tone is set by a measured piano score and Marchori’s sense of breathing larger sense to a film by camerawork not dialog, as in the film’s moving final scenes.

“200 Lives, Paco Rabal,” (“200 vidas, Paco Rabal,” Vanesa Benítez, Spain-France-Mexico)

The doc-feature, a San Sebastián world premiere and centenary tribute to Francisco Rabal, casts us in a dreamlike state. We track the life of the prolific actor who worked with everyone; Buñuel, Antonioni and Saura, and Almodóvar. Vanesa Benítez skips talking heads, allowing Rabal to narrate himself through newly found footage and audio. A Franco-era star who journeyed to collaborate with those in sharp opposition to the dictator, his words reveal him, in Benítez’s words, as “a child who wanted to return to the paradise of childhood.” The doc doubles as a tour of 20th-century cinema, from Nouvelle Vague to Spain’s ’80s.

“Pepita, the Gunslinger,” (“Pepita, La Pistolera” Lucía Puenzo, Argentina,)

Most anything Argentina’s Lucía Puenzo does is worth tracking. Breaking out from the get-go as an A-List festival auteur, her debut, 2007’s “XXY,” won Cannes Critics Week Grand Prix. She has gone on to pioneer genre-driven premium TV in Latin America (“La Jauría”) and champion women’s freedoms, battle against abuse (“Mexico 80,” “Dive”) and empowerment, as in “Pepita the Gunslinger.” Starring Luisana Lopilato (“In Love and in Hate”), it is inspired by the real-life figure of Margarita Di Tullio who rebels against the deaths of fellow sex workers in 1980s Mr del Plata by founding her own brothel and nightlife business empire.

“The Riverbank,” (Matheus Farias and Enock Carvalho, Brazil-Germany)

A Locarno 2026 Special Jury Prize Winner and Best Fiction Feature Film at this year’s Rio Film Festival, Brazil’s biggest film event, “The Riverbank” also marks the latest from Recife’s vibrant film hub, brought to world notice by “The Secret Agent.” Young janitor Izaquiel (Caique Copque), meets statuesque fisherman Jeremias (Ítalo Martins) in the depths of Recife’s mangrove forest, as his job at an evangelical church exposes its links with politics and death squad violence. Picked up by MPM Premium and Premium Films, an auteur multi-genre tropical noir thriller dosed by magical realism and announcing major new voices in Brazilian cinema.