Josep (2020)
February 1939 marked one of the most desperate mass movements of people in modern European history. As Franco's Nationalist forces closed in on the last Republican strongholds in Catalonia, somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 Spanish civilians and soldiers crossed the Pyrenees into France in a matter of weeks. The French government, unprepared and largely unsympathetic, herded the majority of these refugees into open-air camps on the Mediterranean coast, places like Argelès-sur-Mer and Le Barcarès, where the conditions were, by any measure, catastrophic. This episode, known in Spain as La Retirada (the retreat), has received relatively little attention in mainstream cinema, which makes Josep a quietly unusual entry in the French animated canon. The film takes its title and its beating heart from Josep Bartolí, a real Catalan artist and political cartoonist who lived through exactly this experience before eventually escaping to Mexico and, later, New York, where he died in 1995. His drawings, satirical, defiant, and made under conditions that should have made any creative act impossible, survive as a remarkable document of that period.
The film is the feature debut of French political cartoonist Aurel (born Laurent Sourisseau), and his background in illustration is written all over every frame. Produced across a consortium of smaller French and Belgian studios rather than any major animation house, Josep arrived with a modest footprint but earned genuine festival attention, winning the César for Best Animated Film in 2021. That award placed it in distinguished company, and the comparison to other formally adventurous French animated features is not misplaced. If you have followed Macca's coverage of films like No Dogs or Italians Allowed or Fantastic Planet, you will already have a sense of the tradition Aurel is working within: animation deployed not for spectacle or family entertainment but as a medium peculiarly suited to memory, politics, and the kind of history that resists tidy dramatisation. The film's structure is framed through an elderly French man recounting his father's friendship with Bartolí to his own grandson, a device that keeps the story at one remove, filtered through recollection rather than direct witness.
The voice cast leans heavily on Spanish and French talent, which feels appropriate given the film's bicultural subject matter. Sergi López, a face familiar to fans of Spanish and French cinema alike (and perhaps best known to genre audiences from Pan's Labyrinth), provides the voice of the older Bartolí, bringing a weathered, unhurried quality to the role. Alba Pujol voices the younger version, while Sílvia Pérez Cruz, one of the most distinctive musical voices in contemporary Catalonia, contributes to the film's soundtrack in a way that sits somewhere between score and song. Valérie Lemercier and Gérard Hernandez round out the French side of the cast, both reliable and polished but unremarkable in supporting roles that serve the story without overwhelming it. For a 74-minute film, the casting is considered rather than showy, which suits the material.
Josep (2020), directed by Aurel, is a beautifully restrained animated feature that uses its distinctive visual language to tell a deeply personal story of exile, survival, and artistic resilience. Based on the life of Spanish Republican cartoonist Josep Bartolí, the film traces his flight from Franco’s regime, his internment in French refugee camps during WWII, and his later years reflecting on memory, family, and legacy. The animation style is one of its greatest strengths: rough, expressive, and deeply tactile, with a deliberate shift to a more subtle, simplified aesthetic during flashback sequences. This visual distinction elegantly separates past trauma from present-day reflection, grounding the narrative in a painterly intimacy that feels both raw and reverent.
At its core, Josep is a touching meditation on growing older, carrying the weight of history, and finding meaning through hardship and family. It doesn’t rely on plot-driven momentum or conventional dramatic beats; instead, it unfolds like a series of watercolour memories, exploring how displacement and creative passion intertwine across a lifetime. The film’s portrayal of resilience is handled with quiet honesty, never romanticising suffering but acknowledging the quiet dignity of those who endure it. It’s a character study that trusts silence, composition, and artistic restraint to convey what dialogue cannot.
That said, Josep is undeniably a niche film. Its deliberate pacing, minimalist storytelling, and heavy reliance on mood over narrative structure mean it won’t appeal to viewers seeking traditional animated spectacle or tightly plotted drama. Some may find its melancholic tone too subdued, while others might wish for deeper historical context rather than its introspective, memory-driven approach.
Josep is a good, deeply felt animation that prioritises emotion and atmosphere over convention. It’s a poignant, visually striking tribute to art as survival and the quiet scars of exile. Not for everyone, but for those willing to lean into its reflective rhythm, it offers a sincerely moving experience that lingers long after the final frame.
Josep sits within a strand of European animation that treats the form as a serious artistic and political tool, a tradition with a longer history than mainstream audiences might assume. For viewers who found something worthwhile in Macca's look at A Cat in Paris or who are drawn to animation that operates outside the usual commercial expectations, this is a film worth seeking out, even knowing its limitations. The story of La Retirada deserves to be told, and Aurel tells it with evident care and a visual intelligence that reflects his own career as a draughtsman. Whether the film entirely justifies its festival reputation is another question, and one best answered by the review above. But there is something to be said for a 74-minute animated film that leaves you wanting to know more about the actual man, and perhaps that, more than any award, is the most honest measure of what it achieves. Art made to survive is a difficult thing to portray. Bartolí would probably have had something to say about it.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2020 | Watched: 2026-05-26
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Josep (2020) on YouTube
Where to watch (UK)
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