English Abstract

Hard animated biopic focused on the figure of the Catalan artist Josep Bartoli, a refugee from Franco's persecution and the friendship that emerged in 1939 with a French gendarme in a concentration camp in Perpignan (the Spanish refugees persecuted by Franco, once they crossed the Pyrenees were held by the French government in prison camps).

Dark, dry and at times overwhelming, it casts a sharp look at the political moment of the time, the horrors of captivity, the limits of obedience, the devastating force of prejudice, the value of piety and solidarity, and where Art understood as salvation and testimony stands out.

English Review

In 1939, the Spanish refugees persecuted by Franco, once they crossed the Pyrenees, were held by the French government in concentration camps.

This tough animated film by Aurel narrates the meeting of Serge, a French gendarme, with the Catalan cartoonist and painter Josep Bartoli (in the voice of Sergi López) in a prison camp in Perpignan and the friendship that developed between them.

The film is structured as a flash back based on the story that an elderly Serge tells his grandson. The line of the drawing is sober and corresponds to the dryness of this atypical biopic.

The film's bleak atmosphere and its portrayal of the horrors of the prison camp are at times overwhelming. His notes on the political universe of the time are also accurate, with a triumphant Franco regime and a spectrum of refugees from the Popular Front where the differences between republicans, communists and anarchists appear, reflect on the limits of obedience, suffer the devastating force From prejudices, the value of piety and solidarity emerges and art stands out as salvation and testimony.

It is in the concentration camp where most of the story takes place, which in no way exhausts the odyssey suffered by Bartoli, who at one point expresses: “if those great [political] ideas don't find a good person, they turn into death. ”.