Documentary

Okay, Joe! or the Memoirs of Private Guilloux

In August 1944, during the chaotic climate of the Liberation, American GIs committed rapes and murders against French civilians. The U.S. Army set up a court-martial to try them. Almost by chance, it hired the writer Louis Guilloux as an interpreter. Little by little, the novelist discovered that only African-American soldiers were sentenced, often to death. He recounts this in a short story: "Okay, Joe!" By comparing his account with historical reality and the recollections of witnesses and descendants, this documentary reveals several taboos of World War II: the atrocities committed by the U.S. Army against civilians, the rape of women, racial segregation, and the cruel and selective punishments it inflicted on its Black soldiers. The film tells a little-known side of World War II.