Aurel's’s Josep (2020)

 

This cartoon, which is Aurel's first feature-length film, is more manga than Disney and based on a true story. Following the victory of the fascist dictator Franco from February 1939, La Retirada began: nearly half a million republicans, communists and anarchists fled from Spain across the frontier to France. They were arrested and sent to a concentration camps, such as the one near the border in Argelès-sur-Mer, where they were subjected to filthy conditions, frequent mental and physical abuse, and racism. The story is told by a dying grandfather to his young grandchild.

The grandfather was a French policeman in the concentration camp and in spite of his colleagues' violence helped the artist Josep Bartolí (1910-95). Josep had been a member in Barcelona of POUM, a revolutionary organisation against the dictator. Aurel had for some years been interested in the Spanish Civil War, being particularly inspired by Ken Loach's film Land and Freedom (1995).

After 1943 Bartolí left for Mexico, where he became the lover of Frida Kahlo, whose huge image can be seen as a kind of watermark on the above poster. From Mexico Bartolí left for the United States, where he met a number of other artists, and where he died. The film is a remarkable achievement, and a hymn to the triumph of culture over barbarity.