Los Javis have brought the gay epic to awards season, and Netflix is giving it room to breathe on a cinema screen. Daniel D’Addario’s new Variety feature follows Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, singer-turned-actor Guitarricadelafuente and Elite alumnus Miguel Bernardeau as La Bola Negra approaches its October 16 New York and Los Angeles opening. The streamer’s theatrical commitment is an unusually muscular vote of confidence in a Spanish-language film whose gay desire is central to its appeal.

Variety describes three linked timelines: a young man excluded from a social club in 1932; a soldier and his prisoner falling in love during the Spanish Civil War in 1937; and a historian investigating those lives in 2017. Federico García Lorca’s life and unfinished work help connect the stories. The film moves between historical persecution and sexual possibility, with Penélope Cruz’s cabaret performer opening a window onto a wider queer world.

Casting was part of the filmmakers’ political thinking. Calvo tells Variety that work dried up after he played gay on television, and that giving an openly gay performer a leading role mattered to them. Guitarricadelafuente makes his film debut opposite Bernardeau, who does not identify as queer. Their different levels of experience were deliberate: the directors wanted a newcomer’s openness alongside an experienced actor’s technique.

The Oscar case has substantial festival backing. AP reports the directors’ shared Cannes directing prize and the film’s Toronto People’s Choice win; Variety frames it as a potential challenger to The Odyssey and a chance at Netflix’s first best-picture victory. That is campaign-season assessment, of course, rather than a prediction from the Academy. The promising part is that an explicitly gay Spanish film is being discussed at that scale.

For Boston audiences, Netflix’s newly published schedule lists Coolidge Corner Theatre on October 30, with 35mm screenings, followed November 6 by Boston Common, the Seaport Alamo Drafthouse and Kendall Square, among other regional engagements. Streaming begins December 2. The dates give this tale of queer memory a welcome spell in the dark with an audience before it arrives on the sofa.

Read the AP interview with Los Javis

See Netflix’s city-by-city theatrical dates\