Jordan Firstman’s “Club Kid” won the audience award for narrative feature at the 35th Philadelphia Film Festival, Variety reported Wednesday, Nov. 4, and Spain’s Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival named it Best Debut Feature. “It’s been amazing to see the kinds of people that relate to this film, but it really is a movie about growth,” Firstman told Variety for a recent cover story.
“Club Kid,” Jordan Firstman’s first feature as a director, opens in theaters Friday, Nov. 6, from A24, with Firstman, who also wrote it, starring as Peter, a New York party promoter. A24’s synopsis says his “whirlwind lifestyle” gets “upended by the arrival of the 10-year-old son he never knew he had.”
The BFI announced the same day that “La Bola Negra,” from directors Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, won the BFI London Film Festival Audience Award for Best Feature Film as it plays U.S. theaters ahead of its Dec. 2 Netflix debut in the U.S. and Canada. “We are absolutely delighted that La Bola Negra has won the BFI London Film Festival Audience Award,” the pair, known as Los Javis, said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.
Philadelphia’s Audience Award and Mallorca’s Best Debut Prize
Philadelphia festivalgoers chose “Club Kid,” one of the 35th edition’s Centerpiece titles, while the jury gave its best narrative feature prize to Lance Hammer’s “Queen at Sea.” “In Telluride, I watched a 75-year-old conservative man leave the theater in tears,” Firstman told Variety.
He said he was very nervous to take it to the New York Film Festival and show it to “the 35-year-olds who do drugs.” “I built the story to work on levels, with the top being a layer of warmth that feels like a hug,” he said. “I explore some of my more transgressive ideas beneath the surface. If you don’t get it, there’s still a story that will make you laugh and feel something.”
The festival ran Oct. 15 to 25, according to the Philadelphia Film Society, and Variety reported that it drew the highest attendance in its history. “We’ve always thought audience first,” the society’s artistic director, Michael Lerman, told The Philadelphia Inquirer in October.
In Spain, “Club Kid” opened the 15th Evolution Mallorca, which ran Oct. 31 to Nov. 4, and a jury led by Marc Clotet later gave it the Best Debut Feature prize, Variety reported. Celebrating the anniversary with more than 10,000 attendees “is a source of immense pride,” founder and director Sandra Lipski said in a statement.
‘Club Kid’ Took Jordan Firstman From Cannes to the Gothams
The film premiered at Cannes in May in the Un Certain Regard section, then won the Grand Prix and the City of Deauville Audience Award at France’s Deauville American Film Festival in September, according to the festival’s official winners list.
On Oct. 14 it opened the 62nd Chicago International Film Festival with a gala screening at the Music Box Theatre, according to Third Coast Review. “Firstman is the real deal as both a filmmaker and storyteller,” critic Steve Prokopy wrote in the site’s opening-night dispatch.
The Gotham Film & Media Institute’s Oct. 27 nominations put “Club Kid” up for Best Feature and Firstman up for Breakthrough Director.
Los Javis’ ‘La Bola Negra’ Wins London’s Audience Vote
“La Bola Negra” had its London gala Oct. 8 at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, where Ambrossi and Calvo introduced it with Guitarricadelafuente, Miguel Bernardeau and Penélope Cruz, and the BFI called it a “genre-defying queer epic.” “It was joyful to witness a community come together over 12 days of screenings and events to celebrate our 70th birthday,” festival director Kristy Matheson said.
London audiences “enthusiastically embraced the programme, recording their highest ever levels of attendance,” Matheson said of the 70th festival, which closed Oct. 18.
The film follows three generations of men in Spain in 1932, 1937 and 2017 and takes its title from an unfinished play by Federico García Lorca, Netflix says. “When we began writing La Bola Negra, we wanted to tell a story about freedom, legacy, and the importance of LGBTQ+ visibility,” Calvo and Ambrossi told Netflix’s Tudum.
Guitarricadelafuente, a Spanish singer making his acting debut as Sebastián, is nominated for the Gothams’ Breakthrough Performer award. “I saw a 16-year-old gay couple holding hands and hugging each other and crying,” he told The Hollywood Reporter about the film’s audiences.
Los Javis shared Cannes’ best director prize in May with Pawel Pawlikowski, who also won Mallorca’s best director award for an international feature with “Fatherland.” Netflix says the film’s People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival in September “marks the first time a Netflix title has earned the top prize,” and TheWrap reported it was the first non-English-language winner since 2011.
It also took the San Sebastián Film Festival’s audience award, according to Netflix. “To receive this recognition from audiences is particularly meaningful,” Los Javis told THR.
When to Watch ‘Club Kid’ and ‘La Bola Negra’
“Club Kid” reaches theaters Friday with Cara Delevingne, Diego Calva, Reggie Absolom, Colleen Camp and Kirby Howell-Baptiste in the cast, and it made Gayety’s November guide to new gay movies and shows.
Netflix, which won U.S. rights after Cannes, opened “La Bola Negra” in New York and Los Angeles Oct. 16 before moving it to more screens into November, and the film has been drawing celebrity crowds in New York. “We couldn’t imagine a better home than Netflix to bring this story to audiences across the United States,” Los Javis told Tudum.
Spain picked it as its entry for the international feature Oscar, Netflix says, and it will receive the Gotham Vanguard Tribute, TheWrap reported, when the Gotham Awards name their winners Monday, Nov. 30, in New York.
