London Film Festival: ‘La Bola Negra’ Wins Audience Award

La Bola Negra has won the audience award at this year’s London Film Festival.

The LFF ended last month, but the audience award was announced this afternoon.

Directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, the film, which debuted at Cannes, stars Guitarricadelafuente, Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González, Milo Quifes, Penélope Cruz, Lola Dueñas and Glenn Close, explores LGBT heritage and pays tribute to the murdered Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca through stories of three men in the three different eras of 1932, 1937 and 2017.

Since Cannes, La Bola Negra has been submitted by Spain for the Oscar Best International Feature race, and it won the Oscar bellwether People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival. The film has surpassed $43 million at the global box office.

Grace Harper Brighouse’s Dependence won the LFF’s Audience Award for Best British Discovery. The doc examines the filmmaker’s strained relationship with her father, an estrangement caused by his OxyContin addiction, using a collection of home movies she shot from childhood through to adulthood, including film school rushes. The doc premiered at the Camden Film Festival, where it won the Harrell Award. We profiled Brighouse’s film here ahead of the LFF.

The winners of the LFF’s competitive awards were announced at the festival’s close on October 18. They were chosen by juries presided over by Sam Pollard (Official Competition), Amir El-Masry (First Feature Competition), Sandhya Suri (Documentary Competition), and Helen Simmons (Short Film Competition).

Sergei Loznitsa’s Imperium won the Best Film award, Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s 9 Temples to Heaven won Best First Feature, and Asmahan Bkerat’s Concrete Land won Best Documentary.