Ok, Joe!
France
•
52m
Directed by Philippe Baron • Documentary • 2024 • 52 minutes
After the landing of the Allied forces in 1944, writer Louis Guilloux was recruited as an interpreter for the American army. He would soon be confronted with the dark side of liberation: the rapes and murders committed by American soldiers on civilians. Guilloux’s involvement in subsequent investigations and court martial trials would expose him to the army's system of racial segregation and the selective punishment of Black American soldiers. Haunted by what he witnessed, he went on to recount this little-known side of the Allied liberation in his 1976 novel “OK, Joe!”.
Sparked by the recent reissue of Guilloux’s novel, director Philippe Baron set out through the Breton countryside to retrace this suppressed history. As the memory of World War II receded and American cultural dominance rose, many victims continued to be haunted by the trauma inflicted by their ostensible liberators. Interspersing archival footage, interviews, and scenes from modern-day Breton countryside, in OK, JOE! Baron crafts a harrowing account of the forgotten tragedies of World War II.
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