Spanish filmmakers Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, known professionally as Los Javis, ended their 13-year romantic relationship while writing and shooting their hit film La bola negra.
The directing duo announced their personal separation in November of last year as they prepared to film the project, though they decided to keep their creative partnership intact.
Their joint career has reached new heights since the split, with the movie breaking records at the Spanish box office and earning major international acclaim.
Calvo and Ambrossi concluded during production that their mutual bond had to transform rather than dissolve. Despite ending their romantic relationship, the pair continue to attend public events together, including an appearance at the 2026 LACMA Art and Film Gala in Los Angeles.
The filmmakers first rose to prominence writing and directing fringe theatre plays in Madrid before moving into television. Their breakthrough comedy series Paquita Salas and their acclaimed family drama La Mesías turned them into household names across Spain.
Their international profile expanded sharply following the release of La bola negra, which is now the third highest-grossing Spanish film of all time.
Festival success and critical response
The film takes inspiration from Spanish dramatic literature. Its script draws freely on the stage play La piedra oscura by playwright Alberto Conejero, which itself expands upon three surviving pages of an unfinished theatre piece by poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca.
The feature brought the directors major recognition at the Cannes Film Festival on the French Riviera, where they won the award for Best Director for their second film.
The intense promotional tour and the filming process itself marked the end of their long romance. Ambrossi acknowledged in an interview with the Spanish film magazine Fotogramas that the movie still hurts every time he watches it.
Ambrossi said they were the living embodiment of that pain because they separated while writing the film.
The film also earned praise from international critics. In a four-star review for the Financial Times, critic Rodrigo Carretero described La bola negra as a film of overwhelming ambition.
Calvo explained in the same interview that their professional relationship remained unhurt by the separation. He said they were getting along better than ever because personal grievances no longer complicated their work.
Ambrossi admitted he had initially feared their partnership would collapse entirely once production wrapped. Both men briefly considered separate creative projects before deciding to stay together as a filmmaking team.
Ambrossi said there was something magical whenever they worked together, adding that their artistic skills complemented each other naturally.
Personal reflection in film storylines
La bola negra follows the interconnected stories of three gay men living across three separate historical eras. One storyline unfolds in 1932 during the early years of the Second Spanish Republic, another takes place in 1937 amid the Spanish Civil War, and the third is set in modern times in 2017.
As the directors explored romantic conflict across these eras, they found themselves facing an identical crisis in their private lives while shooting their most ambitious project.
Ambrossi told the New York Times that during the shoot they realized they needed to end their romantic relationship. He said both directors were prepared for La bola negra to be their final film together.
The decision to address male desire directly in their work came from veteran filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar. While collaborating with Almodóvar on the documentary project Pedro x Javis, the director pointed out that Los Javis had never depicted desire between two men in their cinema.
The pair used the 2017 storyline of La bola negra to work through their personal situation. The characters of Alberto, played by actor Carlos González, and Juan Pablo, played by actor Julio Torres, served as direct vehicles to reflect their own relationship.
Los Javis told the New York Times that writing those characters helped them understand their own feelings. The process opened an emotional door that forced them to confront the reality that they were no longer in love.
Ambrossi remarked that La bola negra was fundamentally an exploration of love. He noted that trying to capture genuine love before a camera made them realize they no longer possessed it in their private lives.
Calvo added that winning the directing prize at Cannes proved to both men that they should not abandon their professional collaboration. He said the award confirmed that they still made an exceptional creative team.
Cast reactions and cultural references
The production also drew notable reactions from its cast and included distinctive cultural references that caught public attention. Acclaimed Spanish actor Antonio de la Torre joined the cast of La bola negra and publicly expressed his hope that Los Javis would hire him again for future projects.
The film script also mentions Raquel Meller, the famed Spanish cuplé singer and actress of the early twentieth century. Meller achieved international stardom in Paris and Hollywood and was known for a fiery temperament, including an incident where she slapped an opponent in a confrontation compared to Will Smith striking Chris Rock at the Oscars.
Upcoming bilingual film and television projects
The filmmakers are now preparing a broad slate of future screen projects while waiting to see how many Academy Award nominations La bola negra will collect during the upcoming awards race.
Calvo and Ambrossi have confirmed that their next directorial project will be filmed in both Spanish and English, representing their first bilingual international feature film.
The duo are also working actively as executive producers on multiple major television series. For the streaming platform HBO Max, they are developing Tor, a dramatic series inspired by real-life unresolved deaths in the remote Pyrenean mountain village of Tor.
The series is being produced in collaboration with investigative journalist Carles Porta, who has spent years documenting the long-standing land disputes and violent deaths connected to the mountain community.
The filmmakers have also partnered with Spanish broadcaster Atresmedia on two upcoming productions. One is Crimen en España, a drama tracking a crime reporter over eleven years as she investigates five criminal cases.
The second Atresmedia project is Las vecinas, a dramatic series examining a tense dispute between neighbours in the Mediterranean coastal city of Valencia.
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