Netflix Has Chased the Best Picture Oscar for Nearly a Decade. Can ‘La Bola Negra’ Finally Win It for the Streamer?

Awards Circuit Column: The Spanish-language epic has already made history at Toronto. Now Netflix hopes it can do what “Roma,” “The Power of the Dog” and “All Quiet on the Western Front” could not. The streaming giant has built Hollywood’s most expensive awards machine.

The serial billboards on the Sunset Strip, the designer screening rooms and the elite tastemaker dinners have earned Netflix a decade of best picture nominations. What it doesn’t have is the big trophy. Is this the year that finally changes?

In Toronto, the streamer won the People’s Choice Award for “La Bola Negra,” the 160-minute Spanish-language epic from Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (aka Los Javis). It’s the first Netflix film to win TIFF’s audience prize and the first non-English-language winner in 15 years. Of the past 16 People’s Choice winners, 14 earned best picture nominations and four won: “The King’s Speech,” “12 Years a Slave,” “Green Book” and “Nomadland.” The question is no longer whether Netflix has a contender; it’s whether the company has learned how to close the deal.

Its near 10-year history of best picture also-rans has shown it can do almost everything right except win. It lost best picture to “Green Book.” “The Power of the Dog” led the field with 12 nominations in 2021, and Jane Campion won director. But Apple’s “CODA” became the streaming era’s first best picture winner; coincidentally, director Siân Heder helmed this year’s People’s Choice runner-up, “Being Heumann.” Edward Berger’s German-language “All Quiet on the Western Front” earned a record seven BAFTAs and four Oscars in 2022, only to lose best picture to “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” When Netflix goes international, the Academy shows genuine enthusiasm, but tends to compartmentalize it.

The international feature trophy is the consolation prize, and only South Korea’s “Parasite” has ever broken through to a best picture win. Then there’s the contender Netflix wants to forget. Then star Karla Sofía Gascón’s offensive social media posts resurfaced, decimating the campaign and Netflix spent the final weeks scrubbing its lead actress from For Your Consideration ads.

This is a Spanish story, told in Spanish, made by Spanish filmmakers about their own community. Drawing from Federico García Lorca’s unfinished play and Alberto Conejero’s play “La piedra oscura,” it follows three queer men at three points in history. Ambrossi has said the directors set out to make “the gayest war movie ever.” Los Javis shared Cannes’ director prize with “Fatherland” helmer Paweł Pawlikowski.