A short film by Henri Cartier-Bresson — considered the father of modern photojournalism — about British and American volunteers fighting in the Spanish Civil War has been found more than 70 years after it had been presumed lost.

The 18-minute documentary, which was made in 1937, was shown in public in New York in 1938 but later vanished. It is remarkable for the way in which Cartier-Bresson managed to get away from the censors and document the daily life of volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, who fought for the Republican Government against General Franco’s Nationalist forces.

Shot over two days in Aragon, eastern Spain, it shows American, Canadian and British members of the brigade recovering before the Battle of the Ebro, one of the