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One of several animated biopics about to segue from the festival circuit to the big screen, “Josep” is a slim but engaging tribute to the legacy of Spanish artist Josep Bartolí (1910-95), a Catalonian republican whose Goya-esque drawings of his time in French concentration camps inspired the film’s Gallic helmer and art director Aurel (birth name Aurélien Froment), himself an acclaimed press illustrator and cartoonist. The film serves as a sharp reminder of the ignominious fate of some of the 500,000 Spanish refugees fleeing Franco’s anti-fascist forces in early 1939, and it also highlights the power of drawing to bear witness.

Like the forthcoming Danish animated documentary “Flee,” “Josep” was a selection of the 2020 Cannes Film Festival forced to cancel because of the coronavirus. It went on to win France’s César for best animated film and the European Film Award for best animated feature, as well as a slew of other festival prizes.

This affecting animation traces the life of Josep Bartolí who fought in the Spanish civil war, befriended Rothko and Pollock – and became Frida Kahlo’s lover

The Spanish illustrator Josep Bartolí lived enough life to fill a dozen epic biopics. He fought against Franco’s fascists and fled over the Pyrenees into France with 500,000 other refugees in early 1939. After escaping from an internment camp, he made his way to Mexico, where he became a lover of Frida Kahlo. In New York, he was friends with Rothko and Pollock, and designed sets for Hollywood – until his name ended up on the blacklist. Now his life has been turned into a film: not an epic, but a slender and haunting French animation focusing on his years as a prisoner in France.

It’s the feature debut of Aurélien Froment, best known as a cartoonist for Le Monde where his work appears under the name Aurel.