TV3 premieres the multi-award winning ‘Josep’

Animation

Today, TV3’s Sense Fiction program premieres ‘Josep’, the animated film by the French cartoonist Aurel based on the life and work of the Catalan cartoonist Josep Bartolí. A French-Catalan co-production by Imagic TV and “Les Films d’ici Méditerranée”, it tells the story of the drama of exile and the post-war period of Republican exiles in French refugee camps.

The drawings Josep made in the Argelers concentration camp portray the cruelty of imprisonment in the camps. They are the guiding thread of the narrative, which features the voice of Sergi López and music by Sílvia Pérez Cruz. In 2021, the film won the César Awards and the European Film Award for Best Animated Film, as well as the Seminci Award for Best Director at the Valladolid Festival.

The reality of Republican exile

Josep is an animated film about the Catalan cartoonist Josep Bartolí, whose work is set in the context of the end of the Spanish Civil War. The film situates the viewer in a very specific moment: an episode that took place in 1939 in the Argelers concentration camp.

On the one hand, Josep’s particularity is the narration of a true story unknown in France: the imprisonment of Spanish exiles in concentration camps. A subject already mentioned in the documentary Los días azules, which pays homage to Antonio Machado, a Spanish poet who died in Colliure after the same exile. Unlike Machado, Bartolí managed to flee France with his work, the true witness to daily life in the camps. His work came to light years later, when he published the book ‘Campos de concentración’, with texts by Narcís Molins i Fàbrega.

On the other hand, the film shows an aesthetic inspired by Bartolí’s style, focusing above all on the line and the static image. Josep’s animation stands out for its innovative genre, situated at the confluence between traditional animation and raw drawings in movement. In addition, the film shows Bartolí’s encounter with Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, a fact that translates into the mixture of drawing and painting in the film.

 

‘Josep’, a multi-award winning film

Since its premiere, “Josep” has received several awards. In 2020, the film won the Best Animated Film Award at the European Film Awards. In 2021, the César for Best Animated Film. And in 2022, the Seminci Prize for Best Director at the Valladolid Festival.

 

Images: IMagic TV