April in Paris French and Francophone Film Festival -JOSEP

Director: Aurel

2020, 71min., NR

Cast: Sergi López, Emmanuel Vottero, Xavier Serrano

 

The highly anticipated debut film of Aurélien Froment, best known as Le Monde cartoonist Aurel, is an animated tribute to the legendary cartoonist Josep Bartoli. Fleeing Spain during the fight against Franco and fascism, Bartoli is placed in a French internment camp, where he expresses his private memories of the past not through speaking, but through his powerful drawings. His larger-than-life adventures see Bartoli escaping to Mexico, where he becomes the confidant and lover of painter Frieda Kahlo. Although meeting with painters including Jackson Pollack and Theodore Rothko, Bartoli (and the film) never forgets the pain of war, and the struggle for freedom. “Josep’s animation is not born from movement but from its mystery.” – José Amador Pérez Andújarˆ, El Antepenúltimo Mohican, Spain. Discussion leader, Karen Humphreys, Language and Culture Studies, Trinity College