International Competition of Feature Films for Grown-ups

In 1914, when the First World War began, Jean Mordant was a wrestling champion. During his tour abroad, German occupiers in Belgium raped his daughter. Crushed, Jean joins the first Belgian motorized unit with armoured transporters in order to have his revenge. And thus begins the dramatic odyssey of a former wrestler, his manager and other comrades-in-arms. The war takes them to Russia, Mongolia, China and the United States of America. During their journeys, their friendship is put to a test, their determination to fight almost gets broken and the heroes start fighting one another for love. The film is inspired by real events that brought four hundred Belgian soldiers together in Paris so they could form a special motorized unit and experience extraordinary adventures on three continents. The authors, led by debuting director Jan Bultheel, first filmed live actors using the motion capture technique. Subsequently, they created the background and further animated and stylized the actors’ movements. The result is a very realistic film with original animation and colour range.

As with her previous film Crulic: The Path to Beyond, the director chose the genre of animated docu-drama to portray the extraordinary life of Polish photographer and climber Adam Jacek Winkler (1973-2002). Her film covers almost 50 years of the life of a Polish immigrant living a wild life in Paris. In the 1980’s, he feels a change mind. As a modern knight, he sets out for Afghanistan to join the Mujahedeen in their fight against Soviet Russia. The film, which combines live action with animated sequences, is a dialogue between Winkler and his daughter Ania. It draws attention to an often ignored period from the recent history. The film’s visual style, based on Winkler’s photographs and naïvist sketches developed in many styles, creates a manifold collage of artistic approaches from simple sketches through gouache and watercolour to stylized live action as well as computer animation. The film’s visual style is truly impressive but, when accompanied by original soundtrack, the epic and captivating storyline binds naturally with the film’s poetic imagery.

What is the connection between grandpa’s suspicious Mexican cactus, a miniature professor opposed to killing animals for scientific purposes, a duo of not-very-deadly assassins in a Tatra truck and a suicidally stupid knight fighting a dragon? Murderous Tales is an animated feature film in which a variety of heroes undergo original, dark and playful variations on heroism and death in a variety of genres. Each episode sees the filmmakers play with scale and central themes of heroism and death. Each episode has someone very small encounter someone very big (a tiny knight and a giant dragon, an ancient Mexican goblin and a human, a miniature Professor and some cows, two gangsters and The Big Man). All these encounters end with the heroic death of the small character. Each story takes a different, usually humorous or sarcastic, perspective on heroism and death. The film uses a wide range of 2D and 3D animation techniques, motion capture as well as live action. Director Jan Bubeníček worked on Murderous Tales for almost seven years.

Anomalisa is the second film directed by famed screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, this time co-directed by Duke Johnson. The main hero of the film is a middle-aged man named Michal Stone, author of a best-selling book about customer service and how to run a call centre. As a renowned speaker, Michael is invited to a convention where he is to deliver a speech on this subject. But Michael is, quite paradoxically, a man who sees communication with others as a huge problem. In his hotel – the main setting of the film – he runs into Lisa, who may be just the cure to his negative approach to life. Through animation, this familiar plot takes on an interesting dimension. The authors decided to come clean and uncover their animation techniques, neglecting for example to erase spaces between detachable parts of characters’ faces, as is usually done. The film itself plays out under a sort of dreamlike shroud. The sarcastic and melancholic world ruled by Michael who is suffering from the rare Frégoli delusion (whereby essentially everyone looks identical to him) seems to lack credibility. A combination of live-action techniques and animation reinforces a sense of enticing tension in which we don’t know whether to take the film as a metaphor or not, or when it is a dream and when it is a peculiar “live-action film.”

We find ourselves in a bizarre world full of unusual animals by co-director Alberto Vázquez, graphic designer and author of the comic book on which the film is based. The inhabitants of this world dwell on an island devastated by ecological disaster. In this mad and brutal world where everyone has to fight their own demons, young orphans forge a bond and decide to leave the cursed island. Two of them, Birdboy and Dinky the mouse, form a stronger bond than the others. Birdboy is supposed to be the chosen one and has to overcome enormous obstacles that have made him a drug-addicted outcast. Dinky hates her foster parents and wants to get out of this cruel world at all costs. The filmmakers have created an original world with its own rules. Beneath the island’s watercolour sky, dark, almost horror-like drama play out among weird characters trapped in a place from which there is no escape. This visually original film draws inspiration from Japanese anime, where supernatural and reanimated objects become a common part of the story. The film was co-directed by Pedro Rivero.