I don't want to say something nasty about this movie; it would be unfair. The production design and overall work deserves much respect, but unfortunately there were a couple of elements that bothered me. First the characters of the prisoners look - at least most of them - rather good fed and athletics. But I know it is difficult to put lots of people on a crash diet, as Chistian Bale or Tom Hanks did in the past for their roles. Second, as in 99% of films about Nazis - army or Concentration camps - Germans are Always shown as idiots, and this for many details. Germans during WW2 were cruel, barbarians, everything you wish, everything BUT IDIOTS. If they had been so, they would have not spread so much terror in the whole Europe from Norway to Sicily - I Don't even mention North Afrika and Rommel's Afrika Korps - and from Atlantic coast to Russia....So please Don't confound Nazi ideology, which was of course totally idiot and criminal with master race, antisemitism, racism, and GERMAN discipline, order and efficiency spirit. So back to this film, it is not the best ever about concentration camps. I have seen Polish or Russian movies from the sixties and seventies, shot in black and white, far more realistic than this one. But it remains a good film, Don't misunderstand me. One last thing, I saw in the feature an interesting shot, showing four men in a car, with the camera just in front of the wind shield, a shot which was ofteen used by the great French director Jean-Pierre Melville; a shot very rarely shown since many décades now. At least I guess....Maybe this is a tribute from the Spanish director to Melville and his awesome ARMY OF SHADOWS. Which you have this shot, of course.
Plot summary
1943. With the World War II in the maximum exchange of hostilities, life is too merciless and cruel for the inmates who live in the camp of Mauthausen, where between others they are the soldiers who fought and lost in the Spanish Civil War, exiled from Spain by General Franco after to won the war, considering them as no men's land and gifted to Third Reich as free workforce. In this scenery of eternal horror and brutality caused by the Nazis and the Kapos (violent inmates who work as guards to keep the order),young Francesc Boix tries to survive in the camp working as photographer being Paul Ricken's right-hand, Mauthausen's warden. Boix's daily life taking photos, talking with another inmates as Balbuena and Fonseca and making files of the dead inmates who died in failed escapes changes after to realize in an amateur radio created by them that the Third Reich have loss against Soviet Army in the Battle of Stalingrad. Fearing that Ricken and the rest of the Nazis make disappear all evidences of the happened in the prison in the case they can lost the war, Boix obsesses with to keep all negatives of the photos that they prove the horrors committed by SS officers as Franz Ziereis. But after a first failed attempt of an inmate to escape and publish the photos for that the public eye discover the truth, Boix makes a second plan to elude exhaustive Ricken and Ziereis watching and to keep safe and sound the photos. With time running out and the command to burn everything finally ordered, will can Boix to save the evidences sand and at the same time survive to tell the truth to the world?
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Could have been a bit better....
Harrowing concentration camp tale lauds bravery and resolve.
The film is a heart-wrenching love letter to photography and its power of upholding the truth in a confusing world.
Brooding film retelling the merciless and ruthless life of the inmates who lived in the camp of Mauthausen
Based on real events about Francesc Boix (1920-1951) , a notorious Spanish man , he was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War and photographer who was imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp. At the Nuremberg and Dachau trials he presented photographs that played a role in the conviction of Nazi war criminals.
This is an exciting and moving biography about the camp concentration inmate Frances Boix , containg emotion , chills , thrills and astonishing images . Concerning the brutal existence of the inmates who lived in the camp of Mauthausen, where between others they are the soldiers who fought and lost in the Spanish Civil War, exiled from Spain by General Franco after winning the war . Mario Casas gives an acceptable acting as the Republican communist in the Nazi concentration camp of Mauthausen in Austria who attempts to save the evidences of the cruel horrors committed inside its walls. He is well accompanied by a good support cast such as : Alain Hernández , Richard van Weyden , Stefan Weinert , Nikola Stojanovic, Salazar , Franc Reyes , and Macarena Gómez . Futhermore , adequate and atmospheric Cinematography by Aitor Mantxola . And sensitive , appropriate musical score by Diego Navarro. The film was professionally made by Mar Targarona, though it has some flaws and gaps . She is a notorious producer , including titles as Orfanato, El habitante incierto, X3PD, Vivancos, Quien mato a Bambi , Las manos del pianista and El cuerpo directed by Oriol Paulo. Mar has directed a few films such as ¨Secuestro¨ and this ¨Boix photographer of Mauthausen¨ and series as ¨Muere mi vida¨ and ¨Abuela de verano¨ . Rating 6.5/10 . Well worth watching
Based on actual even aboutabout Frances Boix : ASpanish republican he was exiled in France in 1939. He was recruited by the French Foreign Legion and French Army and captured in 1940 by the Germans. Boix, like over 7,000 Spaniards, was an inmate in the Mauthausen concentration camp between January 1941 and May 1945. From the end of August 1941 he worked in the Erkennungsdienst, the photography department of the camp administration, taking ID photos of inmates and documenting events in the camp. He was able to hide and preserve until liberation about 20,000 negatives taken by the SS head of the department, Paul Ricken , as well as by himself.On January 28 and 29, 1946 at the Nuremberg trial (International Military Tribunal),Boix was called by the French prosecution to show photographs taken by the SS in Mauthausen.Those photos depicted the conditions in which the prisoners lived and were murdered in that camp.They were also proof that the camp was known and visited by high leaders of the Third Reich, such as Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who appeared visiting both the Mauthausen camp proper, and the Wienergraben quarry adjacent to the camp.In April 1946 Boix was again a witness, this time in the American military trial that took place in Dachau against 61 accused from the Mauthausen camp.Between 1945 and 1951 Boix worked as a photo reporter in the French press,particularly for a newspaper associated with the French Communist Party.He died in Paris on 7 July 1951 from kidney failure at age 31