Spain is widely seen as having one of the strongest and most competitive fields to choose from when it comes to determining its best international feature film submission for the 2027 Oscars.
On Thursday, the country unveiled a shortlist of three movies remaining in contention before a final pick is unveiled on Sept. 16.
And the candidates are… The Beloved by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, La bola negra (The Black Ball) by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, aka Los Javis, or the two Javiers, and Sundays by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa.
The first two films were Cannes breakouts earlier this year. However, the third Spanish movie in the Cannes 2026 competition program, Bitter Christmas, and its big-name director, Pedro Almodóvar, didn’t make the Thursday shortlist.
The Black Ball, an epic about gay men in war-torn Spain, is a big Netflix hope for the Oscars. Its director duo won the best director award at Cannes. “It is high time we had a gay war epic of this scope and soulfulness and invention,” THR‘s review highlighted, calling the movie “a dazzling mix of contemporary pop sensibility and classical filmmaking.”
