As one of many solely Black males identified to have been imprisoned on the Mauthausen focus camp in Austria, the lifetime of José Carlos Gray-Molay has, for many years, been of curiosity to historians of the Second World Struggle and the Holocaust. The historic archive accommodates two footage of the younger José Carlos wearing formal-looking apparel on the camp, in addition to tales of a Black man from Barcelona – described as ‘not solely good-looking but additionally cultivated’ – who confused the prejudices of his Nazi captors, however little else was identified about him. On this quick movie, his daughter Muriel now tells her father’s unbelievable life story, from his childhood in Spanish Guinea (now Equatorial Guinea), to his years as a freedom fighter within the Spanish civil struggle and the French resistance, to his time in Mauthausen, to his postwar years as a household man in France, when he hardly ever spoke of his previous. Into her narrative, the Spanish director Enric Ribes weaves recreated dwelling motion pictures, household snapshots and archival data, making a deeply transferring movie and significant historic doc from what’s, above all else, a daughter’s love letter to her beloved late father.
Through Short of the Week
