El Fotógrafo de Mauthausen [The Photographer of Mauthausen] (2018)

El Fotógrafo de Mauthausen

[The Photographer of Mauthausen] (2018)

Directed by Mar Taragrona

Written By: Alfred Pérez Fargas and Roger Danès

Starring: Mario Casas, Richard van Weyden, Alain Hernández and Macarena Gomez.

El Fotógrafo de Mauthausen is a film everyone should watch because it truly shows the horrors of the Holocaust and the Nazi’s final solution.

This film follows the story of Francisco Boix, a spanish photographer who was exiled from Spain due to serving in the Republican Army during the Spanish Civil War, he when joined the french army during World War Two, only to be captured by the Germans and sent to Mauthausen concentration camp. Boix worked as a prisoner in the SS photographic service during his time at Mauthausen, whilst there he (and many other spanish prisoners) stole and hid negatives (photographs) which showed the true horrors of what went on in Mauthausen. It is estimated that Boix hid around 20,000 negatives.

Francisco Boix 

Before I started watching this film I was completely uneducated and ignorant to how Spanish Republicans were treated by the Nazis. It was something I never really thought about when learning about World War Two and the Nazi regime. I never learnt about the Spanish Civil War in school and the aftermath that followed so I never gave the subject much thought. Therefore, this film was a complete eye opener for me.    

I was so caught up in the story of the film that I completely forget to pay any attention to any of the technicalities (lighting, sound etc). The one note I did make was how the dark lighting and monochrome colours created an extremely dark mise-en-scene which obviously helped to represent the dark theme of the film. I thought this was an excellent way to represent the theme and emotions of the film.

The amount of detail this film goes into in how much effort the Nazis made to put on a show is astonishing. I stupidly never really thought about the possibility of the Nazis staging photographs of life inside the concentration camps for the use of propaganda.

The film goes into a lot of detail in how much effort the Nazis used to create those propaganda photos, but I still do not think anyone would even be able to comprehend what Boix and his fellow prisoners working for the SS photographic service had to witness nor the risks and lengths they went to to hide the negatives that would convict the Nazis.

A pivotal point in the film is when Boix is ordered to burn all the photos he has taken at the camp, including the ones of high ranking Nazi officials coming to visit the camp. Boix knows he is being ordered to do this because the Nazis lost at Stalingrad.

Boix knows the Nazis are losing the war and he knows that if he keeps these negatives he can help bring the Nazis down.

As the credits began to role, copies of all the real negatives/photos that Boix saved are shown on screen. By the end of the credits I felt sick because I was still trying to process everything that these people went through to bring down the Nazis.

To conclude, El Fotógrafo de Mauthausen is a brutally honest, eye opening must see film that recounts the bravery of one man who seems to have been forgotten as a hero who fought against the Nazis in a most brave and distinctive way.

Feel free to leave a comment below your thoughts on the film. You can also contact me via twitter (@niamhcrawley_), instagram (@crawley.filmandtv), facebook or, you can email me at crawley.filmandtv2000@gmail.com.