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February 1939. Overwhelmed by the flood of Republicans fleeing Franco's dictatorship, the French government's solution consists in confining the Spanish refugees in concentration camps where they have no other choice than to build their own shelters, feed off the horses which have carried them out of their country, and die by the hundred for lack of hygiene and water... In one of these camps, two men, separated by barbwire, will become friends. One is a guard the other is Josep Bartoli (Barcelona 1910 - New York 1995), a cartoonist who fights against the Franco regime.
Avis de la communauté (2)
[MUBI] The director manages to recreate the drawings made by Josep Bartolí during his stay in the concentration camps. That static of the illustrations is also a static environment, in which time stands still, it becomes eternal in waiting and violence. The scenes with Frida Kahlo soften the tension of the aggressive line, make the movement more linear. Necessary portrait of complicity with tyranny.
There's a scene where Josep Bartolí is pleading with a printer to use more ink in the book they were publishing to make the drawings really stand out, and that is my note for the director of this movie. I didn't know about painter / artist (and lover to Frida Kahlo) Josep Bartolí before seeing this movie. A good documentary makes you want to go home and immediately research the subject, and this just made me want to get home. I found the cartoon images uninspired for an animated film about and artist and the story didn't succeed in getting up from the page. Maybe if they'd pushed everything a little harder.