Online catalogue

Hike, climb and soar through the peaceful mountainside landscapes of Hawk Peak Provincial Park. Follow the marked trails or explore the backcountry as you make your way to the summit. Along the way, meet other hikers, discover hidden treasures and take in the world around you.

Baba Is You is a puzzle game where the rules you have to follow are present as blocks you can interact with. By manipulating them, you can change how the game works, repurpose things you find in the levels and cause surprising interactions!

Disco Elysium is a ground-breaking open-world role-playing game. You’re a detective with a unique skill system at your disposal and a whole city block to carve your path across. Interrogate unforgettable characters, crack murders or take bribes. Become a hero or an absolute disaster of a human being.

You are a traveling painter, exploring the island of Eastshade. Capture the world on canvas using your artist’s easel. Talk to the inhabitants to learn about their lives. Make friends and help those in need. Discover mysteries and uncover secrets about the land.

Feudal Alloy is an action-packed RPG platform set in some sort of medieval world starring a fish controlling a robot. You are an ordinary country robot in the distant future. You explore a world where fish have built robotic bodies from the remnants of the human civilization and are currently in a period similar to our middle ages.

Aliya Elasra is an archaeologist exploring a strange region of space called the Nebula with her robot sidekick Six, hoping to uncover the secrets of the long-forgotten past. When a roboticist goes missing, she starts down a trail of discoveries that will lead to the very edge of her world.

Kids allows you to move with and against crowds until everyone is gone. Kids is a short interactive animation drawn by Michael Frei and coded by Mario von Rickenbach, their second collaboration after the award-winning project Plug & Play.

Manifold Garden is a game that reimagines physics and space – a beautiful Escheresque architecture where the laws of physics are different. Geometry repeats infinitely in every direction and falling down leads you back to where you started. Master the rules of the universe and restore a barren world.

Your country was divided by a wall. The only way to see your family at the other side of the wall is to participate in a perverse government reality show. To win, you need to be precise, swift and willing to sacrifice other competitors. Despite a serious Orwellian theme, the game is full of sarcastic humour that spares no one.

Pilgrims is a playful adventure game by the makers of Machinarium and Samorost. Wander around a fairy-tale world, find new friends and decide their fate as well as the fate of the whole little kingdom.

Sayonara Wild Hearts is a dreamy arcade game about riding motorcycles, skateboarding, dance battling, shooting lasers, wielding swords and breaking hearts at 200 mph. Journey through a custom-written pop soundtrack, chase scores and set out to find the harmony of the universe, hidden away in the hearts of Little Death.

It is a lovely morning in the village and you are a horrible goose. In this mischievous puzzle stealth video game developed by House House and published by Panic, players control a goose who terrorises the inhabitants of an English village.

Mayor is alone in a dark world with no memories, too sad to realise his dear friends are still nearby. However, an unexpected reunion helps him remember the joy in simply grabbing a friend by the hand and running off on an adventure together.

The golf game for people who hate golf. A silly physics-based golf parody where every golf course is a new surprising type of golf, some brilliant or hilarious, others so absurd they will make you go: WHAT THE GOLF?

Wilmot’s Warehouse is a puzzle game about keeping a warehouse running in tip-top shape. You play as Wilmot, a hard-working warehouse employee tasked with pushing, sorting and stacking a variety of products. Make sure to keep everything sorted as orders need to be resolved quickly and they keep coming!

The short film recounts what happened to Jacob Hall and Ava Olsen, who were first-graders at Townville Elementary School in South Carolina when a 14-year-old boy opened fire on their school playground at recess. Jacob was killed and the movie follows Ava as she struggles to deal with the aftermath of the shooting.

Another Dream, a hybrid animated documentary and VR game, brings the gripping, true love story of an Egyptian lesbian couple to life. Faced with a post-revolutionary backlash against the LGBTQ community, they escape from Cairo to seek asylum and acceptance in the Netherlands. An accompanying installation allows audiences to reflect on what they have seen, heard and felt in VR.

BattleScar follows a year in the life of Lupe, a Puerto Rican-American living in late 1970s New York City. The film utilises Lupe’s handwritten journal to guide us through her experiences spanning across the year 1978, when she meets Debbie. Debbie introduces Lupe to the Punk scene of the Bowery and exposes her to the secret worlds co-existing on the Lower East Side in the late 70s.

Bank security guard S overhears that there is a mysterious black bag in the safe. He decides to take advantage of his job and steal the bag. This VR film uses abstract metaphor combined with a unique hand-painted art style. It tells the story of a person who reaped what he sowed, but with an open ending. Everyone has their own interpretation of what is in the bag.

Bodyless is a surreal VR experience based on the director’s childhood memory during Taiwan’s martial law period in the 1970s, when human qualities were simplified and quantified according to a few characteristics recognised and measured by the ruling class. The audience experiences the journey through the eyes of an old man who was a political criminal under a secret government experiment.

There’s a culture war under way on the Internet. Subcultures on image boards such as 4chan and 8chan publish inhuman content under the same pseudonym – ANONYMOUS. Candy World is a virtual reality installation that confronts the viewers with this political phenomenon in an artificial environment.

Achik’, the spirit of a young Mayan immigrant, guides viewers through her dreams and memories of the arduous journey north. Starting in the Guatemalan jungle, travelling through central Mexico and reaching the desert in Arizona. Each chapter is composed from documentation of immigrants’ journeys during the year 2018.

In the Kuzan Republic, the Minister of Defence, who is expected to take part in a meeting of the Next-generation Weapon Coordination Council, has ordered an advance onsite inspection. Public Security Section 9, headed by Major Motoko Kusanagi, must secure the area and clear it from a rumoured terrorist threat.

It’s a cold night in Woodland City in 1983. Being a zombie is against the law. The undead have been around for almost a decade now, but peaceful coexistence with the “normal” people continues to fail. They hide in the forest, away from the dangerous zombie hunters. But Gloomy is not completely like other zombies. He has access to things we don’t see or understand. Nature knows he’s special.

Inspired by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, this science fiction adaptation is set on the dwarf planet Ceres where astro-biologist Captain Kurtz has gone missing from his outpost. It is your mission to retrieve Kurtz. As you journey deep into the Ceres cave network you will learn the story of Kurtz’s disappearance via the onboard Artificial Intelligence Teeva.

An immersive VR comedy about big creatures and small slights. Grigon might not be the biggest Kaiju on the block, but he is the most neurotic. When he discovers legendary Kaiju – Mega-Hydra rampaging on his turf, it becomes a battle of passive aggressive proportions.

A stop-motion VR film that tells the story of arriving in a new country to live. Your taxi driver navigates the new terrain with you, acting as your guide while also revealing small parts of his own story. Passenger recreates and investigates the geographic and visual dislocation of arriving somewhere unfamiliar, and beginning the journey of finding a new home in a foreign land.

What is behind the cinema screen? What if the forces of unlimited imagination penetrate through the canvas into our reality? What if the auditorium dissolves and with it the familiar laws of cinema itself? In a way never before seen, tx-reverse shows this collision of reality and cinema and draws its viewers into a vortex in which the familiar order of space and time seems to be suspended.

Not everything is at it seems when 8-year-old Lucy’s imagination proves to be a reality. Based on the work by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, Wolves in the Walls transports you into the magic of virtual reality cinema, where only you can help Lucy discover what’s truly hiding inside the walls of her house.

In his feature debut, Latvian director Edmunds Jansons, known for his more or less absurd short films Choir Tour (2012) and Isle of Seals (2014), ventures into the field of children’s or rather family films. The film’s protagonist is a boy named Jacob who lives with his constantly busy father in the Latvian capital. Jacob’s father is an architect and the boy dreams that one day, he himself will design entire cities that he now draws with his crayons. But he is forced to stop dreaming when he is unexpectedly sent to spend the summer with his pirate uncle and his at first unpleasant cousin Mimmi in Riga’s Maskachka suburb. Even though the boy doesn’t want to go, the charm of the place and his somewhat loony relatives eventually arouse his curiosity. In the end, Jacob and Mimmi embark on an unexpected adventure during which they meet a greedy businessman and a pack of local dogs. The film is characterised by Jansons’ signature artistic style and his sense for absurd situations, but everything is easy to comprehend even for children. Jansons utilises his experiences from short films for children and his work as a children’s book illustrator. The film won an award at the International Film Festival for Children and Youth in Tehran and won the Critics’ Choice Award at the Kids Kino Forum in Warsaw.

The duo of Swiss directors sent a truck driver on a trans-dimensional trip beyond the boundaries of reality. Warm colour tones of a vast desert alternate with empty black and white space between individual versions of the driver’s life (and death).

Sophie never wanted to entertain hotel guests. And they are not very keen on listening to a crab sing either. And yet, Sophie endures in her humiliating job. But one day, an unexpected partner comes into her life and plays a much bigger role than a mere second voice in an awkward show.

Snow-white houses glare into the distance, the sea surface sparkles and Greek islands endure a heatwave. When the first visitors come to the beach, we witness a series of routine tasks that – along with the heat – drive people crazy. The only rescue is the surging sea.

Years ago, a male gannet called Nigel found a home at the New Zealand island of Mana. His touching story was followed by experts and the general public – Nigel settled down with a mate made of concrete, one of many placed here in an effort to bring birds back to the island. This film with a refined artistic style follows his story.

Some of them feel smaller than the others and some feel less happy. Some drown in anger and some try to fix their relationships. And some sit on a rooftop of a house where all of this is taking place subject to the attacks of the surroundings. But all share a need for a remedy and peace that may never come.

The director, a student of the French school La Poudrière, takes us to a market. The day of a young banana seller named Reda doesn’t go well. His boss is not in a good mood and to navigate between swarming customers with two cups of coffee (when dressed in a banana costume) is just as hard as satisfying their needs.

In her graduate anidoc, the Portuguese director studying in Germany explains the circumstances of a crucial decision in the life of a young woman named Anna. She uses a minimalist black and white style to visualise the theme of abortion, giving the situation that many women find themselves in a convincing urgency.

Using neurotic animals, the director explores the anxiety and fear that some people feel when meeting new people. Humorous metaphoric scenes star an intellectual porcupinefish, exhibitionist stingray, exercising sloth and a chameleon in front of a mirror.

This film critically examines institutional care for children in the Czech Republic and its heritage from the communist era. Authentic testimonies of the film’s protagonists are sensitively underlined by a moderate artistic style. The Slovak director made this film at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.

A story of a young boy whose best friend has for a long time been a magnet. The thing about the magnet is that it attracts various little treasures. But it can hardly measure up to a real human friend… A sensitive Chinese film about a strong friendship and a tragic event that cuts a childhood short.

This graduate of the Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín and the author of the acclaimed film Case (2011) has become a sought-after director of music videos. In his latest piece for the Czech electronic duo Noisy Pots, he takes us on a hypnotic cosmic ride through time and space dominated by round and circular motifs and shades of black and white.

This music video animates a post-industrial landscape near Pardubice – non-touristy, seemingly peaceful and yet mysterious zones that are unpredictable and treacherous as if taken from Stalker. Even though the trains are only passing through such places, it is worth getting off them and heading into the woods. An original and atmospheric ride through a black and white landscape.

This experimental music video depicts the dissonance between the way we feel inside and the way we present ourselves to the world, on social media and in general through playful work with plasticine.  Authors Eliška and Lee Oz have been specialising in claymation for quite some time and achieve unusually fluid results.

Marie Nováčková’s graduate film was made at the University of West Bohemia under the tutelage of Jiří Barta. The black and white music video is full of weird creatures marching through a gloomy and mysterious world. The visuals excellently resonate with the Czech band’s post-rock style mixed with electronics.

This music video depicting the hopeless journey of a lost astronaut plays with composition in a non-traditional vertical format and toys with the aesthetics of total animation. For that reason, it uses a very limited colour palette.

Fake news is nothing new; public opinion has been manipulated since the dawn of time. But in the internet age, the manipulation has acquired a whole new dimension. In this video, Vysvětli.cz tries to inspire today’s recipients to be more careful with regards to information.

To animate her music video, a student of the Film and Television Graphics Studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague used common tools of the popular Windows program Paintbrush – “lasso” and “can”. On the origin of her music video, she comments: “I paint a landscape in which I want to get lost myself without revealing all its secrets.”

Creatures of the New World are gathering in Pilsen to enjoy the international competition of audiovisual works made by children, youth and students, Animánie. Last year’s festival jingle visualising the theme of the “New World” took us to a strange colourful planet inhabited by weird creatures.

A commercial spot for a project called Booklandia that aims to help parents orientate themselves in the offer of books for children and helps to boost children’s interest in reading. It offers a platform for parents, grandparents, teachers and libraries with recommendations of various books for various children. 

The music video for electronic duo Himalayan Dalai Lama is based on an experiment processing and developing seven 35mm colour negatives that were exposed to various foodstuffs such as baking soda, salt, vinegar, red wine, energy drink, rum and coke and lemon.

Animated short video which in a fun way draws attention to common everyday activities having a negative impact on our planet and nature. Even though it is a commissioned work for Czech cosmetics brand Manufaktura, the promotional message is rather side-lined. Furthermore, the spot is characterised by its refined artistic style.

This Christmas commercial for the Czech muesli producer uses typical local traditions such as a Christmas tree and winter fun. It also uses the motif of hanging fruit on trees in the woods for animals.

Animated photo collage music video for Medial Banana and Polemic – a long-awaited collaboration! Two stars of Slovak ska and reggae join forces and bring us the timeless anthem Old Times (Staré časy). The track describes the good old times of the 90s, the era of the Kelly Family, Bravo magazine and the Skippy TV series.

In a world full of superheroes, high school student Izuku Midoriya is one of few people without any superpowers. Or is there perhaps a way for him to become the greatest superhero of all? This trailer for a manga published in Czech uses comic book panels and works with typical anime style.

A sincere happy New Year wish on behalf of the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in the form of an animated video bearing trademarks of its authors – wildness, picturesqueness, absurdity and even a slight retardation of the resulting shape.

A man is in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. There are a couple of strange things around. Natural elements are starting to perform spectacular theatre. If we dive further into our mind, maybe we will find who performs the theatre truly. This atmospheric music video made by a student from Zlín is characterised by its excellent 3D CGI animation.

This short spot for the Health Institute in Ostrava draws attention to the prevention of spreading HIV/AIDS and its treatment. It’s characterised by moving sequencing, unusual perspectives and an artistic style reminiscent of crayon drawings.

This short educational film portrays the youth of Czech gymnast František Pecháček and the events that shaped his personality. Towards the end, it takes us to the Strahov Stadium in Prague in 1938, where 30,000 members of the Sokol organisation performed his choreography Oath to the Republic.

From its hometown of Loštice, a ripened cheese goes to the Cheese Academy. But to find one’s place among the cheeses of the world will not be easy. A short “advertcational” film for children about the legendary cheese from Olomouc.

This emotionally strong and elegantly animated adaptation of the novel of the same name is set in the late 1990s in Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan. Historian Mohsen and artist Zunaira would like to believe that there is a happy future for them, but they find themselves in the middle of a dark era of Afghan history. The ruined city is controlled by the Taliban and hardly a day goes by without violence and humiliation of women. After Mohsen succumbs to mass hysteria and takes part in the stoning of a prostitute, he vainly seeks forgiveness from his wife. Art, belief in education and love apparently have no chance in these dismal times. The author of the original is the Algerian writer Mohammed Moulessehoul, author of the novel The Attack, who, to avoid censorship, uses the pen name Yasmina Khadra. The Swallows of Kabul was published in 2002, at a time when memories of the depicted events were still fresh even though the story is fictitious. The film directed by female duo Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec premiered 17 years later, but the adaptation has managed to keep the urgency, message, atmosphere and strength of the original. The film was praised throughout the world and screened at – among other festivals – the Cannes Film Festival in the section Un Certain Regard.

An infallible trademark of the latest film made by the renowned French director and graphic artist Jean-François Laguionie (Louise by the Shore, 2016; The Painting, 2011) in collaboration with his colleague Xavier Picard is the magical atmosphere of a perishing world in which a young monkey named Tom lives. To an old town reminiscent of fin-de-siècle Paris that is slowly consumed by a surrounding jungle comes a mysterious old man – a Prince – whom Tom finds washed up ashore. This is a well-timed opportunity for Tom’s parents – unrecognised scientists – who strive to prove the existence of other monkey civilisations on the other side of the world. The old monkey is an unprecedented mystery to Tom, as is Tom’s city to the Prince. But he eventually begins to enjoy his adventure and forms a friendship with the boy. In an effort to prove that the hypotheses of Tom’s parents are correct, Tom and the Prince will have to venture beyond the boundaries of the known world, its customs and acknowledged truths. They will have to find themselves and discover things that are far more important than the fact that the world doesn’t end at the seashore or behind the green curtain of the jungle lianas.

In her meticulously animated film, the French author introduces a disturbing vision of old age. Behind the walls of a gloomy house, we observe an old couple fighting their last battle, which is already lost. While the old lady frantically knits, the old man is trying to find a new sense in things. It seems, however, that neither way is right, and the end is inevitable.

A follow up to the internationally successful film We Can’t Live Without Cosmos, which was nominated for an Oscar in 2016 – the second Oscar nomination for the renowned Russian filmmaker Konstantin Bronzit. In He Can’t Live Without Cosmos he focuses on a mother, her son and the inevitability of human destiny.

For his visually captivating and brilliantly animated probe into a part of Japanese history, the young author chose a combination of hand drawing and ink on paper. During the Age of the Provinces at War, many lives were lost. A castle architect discovers the possible role of a tea room as a place for warriors to regain humanity.

When she finds out that her partner is cheating on her, the heroine of this original film chooses an even more original way to respond. This collage-like drama combining several animation techniques is a sequence of bizarre spectacles in which the woman obsessively watches her husband’s parallel relationships and makes an extensive collection of various “catches”. This hobby of hers helps her to overcome jealousy and realize her potential in an utterly unusual way.

This film by Congolese authors that reflects the situation in their homeland is a unique spectacle in our international competition. As self-taught animators, Frank Mukunday and Trésor Tshibangu have made several short films but Machini is their first film that was produced in professional conditions. The directors animated various materials that underline the rawness of their story.

Apart from numerous short sketches and a feature film, popular series A Town Called Panic also includes a twenty-six-minute special. It is no surprise that Cowboy and Indian find themselves in a precarious situation again: as a reward for passing their exams in school, Horse gets them tickets to a sold-out county fair. But he slips, hits his head, and wakes up with no idea where he has hid the tickets. And so begins a race against time...

Ties between parents and their children can sometimes be so strong that the parents wish that it was impossible to break them. But despite that, a moment comes when children who reach adulthood decide to stand on their own feet. The Russian director used the 3D pen technique of animation to capture this very moment and its effects.

This allegorical and emotionally and visually captivating film is a vision of a children’s revolt against sadistic parents. Houses are burning, men and women trembling in fear and children are saddling bears to turn their “revolution” into a wild and boisterous dance. The author has already made several short films with strong themes that achieved success at various festivals.

This film is the directorial debut of an Argentinian director living in London and specialising in CGI animation. Drive is a mysterious piece that explores the twisted story of a kid growing up in a dysfunctional family. This psychological thriller follows the character along a spiralling descent into madness, piecing together the portrait of a killer.

This fresh film from Ukraine made by Mykyta Lyskov, graduate of the Kyiv National University of Theatre, Cinema and Television, is full of absurd scenes which the author uses to interpret the contemporary Ukrainian society. Lyskov relentlessly lines up one scene full of black humour after another and stylises everything in a distinct artistic expression.

Tireless Czech experimenter Vojtěch Domlátil, who focuses on nature and movement through the landscape, presents this black and white (or rather white and black) morning impression that he likes to call “a breathing meditation in the form of a fully linear animation”. We watch undefined and minimalist and yet familiar spectacles accompanied by everyday morning sounds.

Jean-Luc sets out from Paris to a place hidden in the middle of the Louisiana wetlands. Endless fights with his mother-in-law have forced him to seek a voodoo practitioner. At first, everything goes the way he imagined, but his expedition ends abruptly. After fifteen years of working together, renowned French filmmakers Julie Rembauville and Nicolas Bianco know exactly how to escalate suspense and time their gags.

Renowned animator and director Theodore Ushev presents another ambitious film, this time with almost 30 minutes of running length. It is once again a suggestive and visually mesmerising epic. The Physics of Sorrow tracks an unknown man’s life as he sifts through memories of his youth in Bulgaria through to his increasingly rootless and melancholic adulthood in Canada.

Life tends to be unstable especially when one is living on water. And for Nestor, a man with OCD who is derailed by the slightest deviations from anything, life is unsettling. And just wait and see what happens when his houseboat is caught in a storm. The author has focused on work with rhythm and gradation.

This Academy Award nominated and Student Oscar and Annecy Cristal winning film is the biggest success of Czech animation in recent years. Made by a Russian director studying at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, this impressive puppet film uses dynamic hand camera and detailed close-ups of the puppets’ faces to emphasise the story about a not-so-ideal relationship between a father and his daughter.

While two birds talk about their existence, a small apple makes its way into the depths of a cave. This humorous an unusually sophisticated film, which was successful at many international festivals, depicts three worlds, three conversations and three levels: heaven, earth and the subterranean world. And it does so with an ideal detached perspective and great attention to detail.

A black and white and heavily absurd film inspired by the works of Jacques Tati. The free composition movie defines the real substance of day to day life with the sensation achieved by connecting scenes that are independent from one another. The essence of the work is in the relationship between these scenes.

This mesmerizing one-shot ride made using an unusually stylized CGI animation will take us from the bottom to the top of a human civilisation operating on the principle of late and ruthless capitalism. How do individual floors fit together and what binds them?

This autobiographical ani-doc with abstract passages was made by a Chinese filmmaker living in Los Angeles and explores her uneasy relationship with her mother. The pressure exerted by the Chinese society on the mother whose situation was far from ideal was transferred to her daughter when she was young. The two women started to work on mutual understanding only after she grew up.

This poetic and pleasantly stylized film is a graduate film from the University of Tomáš Baťa in Zlín. Its director Aliona Baranova colourfully and wordlessly depicts the story of a sailor returning home by playfully using colours, scale and distorted perspective. The film competed at Berlinale, among other festivals.

This experimental film bordering on abstraction was made by a German-British animator and sound engineer. Her vivid film is set in a room where a man sits and explores our perception of time, bodies and objects, and our inability to comprehend the full motion of things.

In a limited space (both with regards to the film’s running length and its setting), the young French author of this family drama explores the relationships between a father, two sons and a distant mother. The father takes the kids to the sea, but the quiet trip suddenly ends when their boat starts sinking. But as the director humorously shows, the real cause of the family crisis lies elsewhere.

Vast plains, colourful sceneries, a red dog that seems to reach into the sky. This is how Tom experiences summer in Blieschow, on his grandfather’s farm. But the reality seems to be different, especially when a competitive cousin enters the scene. Breath-taking artistic style full of inventive ideas and captivating animation turn this holiday drama into a remarkable “flick”.

Ruka is a young girl whose parents are separated and whose father works in an aquarium. When two boys, Umi and Sora, who were raised in the sea by dugongs, are brought to the aquarium, Ruka feels drawn to them and begins to realize that she has the same sort of supernatural connection to the ocean that they do. Umi and Sora’s special power seems to be connected to strange events that have been occurring more and more frequently, such as the appearance of sea creatures far from their home territory and the disappearance of aquarium animals around the world.

Children of the Sea was made by the renowned Japanese Studio 4°C, which is known for its films Animatrix (2003), Mind Game (2004) and Tekkonkinkreet (2006). The film is based on the manga of the same name by Daisuke Igarashi and the film’s score was composed by Joe Hisaishi, a renowned composer known for his work with Hayao Miyazaki.  As is traditional in anime, the film’s fantasy style is a basis for more general contemplation closely tied to the real world. With its captivating visual style and images of not only the submarine world, the film touches on the subject of the climate crisis and the loss of sensitivity towards nature. It is not afraid of visual experiments and Kubrickesque moments of immersion.

Leipzig 1989. A twelve-year-old girl named Fritzi lovingly takes care of her best friend Sophie’s little dog Sputnik, while Sophie’s family is on summer vacation in Hungary. But when school starts, Sophie doesn’t come back… Like many others, she and her mother emigrated to the West. Fritzi sets out on a fearless journey to return Sputnik to her friend. On her journey she witnesses unsettling events that help change the future of Germany and the whole of Europe.

This film with a refined artistic style is a thrilling adventure with a brave heroine that takes place against the backdrop of real historical events that come across as dull, grey and unimaginable from the pages of history books. With its chosen form and attention to period details, Fritzi: A Revolutionary Tale is an unusual family film – entertaining and educational at the same time. It uses a child’s perspective to paint a picture of the peaceful revolution of 1989 in which Prague and the local German embassy played a big role. This thrilling and yet kind animated film about the power of friendship and the courage to change history will deeply move not only young viewers.

Alexandra Májová’s humorous and playful film is a remarkable parable of human relationships. But in her film, a man isn’t trying to solve problems with a woman, but with a troublesome home appliance. Eventually, emotions and hormones steer this minimalist and artistically inventive home drama in an unexpected direction leading towards a surprising end.

The renowned Portuguese director decided to portray her memories of her uncle who worked as an accountant and led a very humble and ordinary life. Regardless of that, Regina Pessoa saw her uncle as a very important person and that’s exactly what she is trying to convey in her latest artistically polished film: even an ordinary man can be extraordinary.

Disturbing South Korean drama Homo ErecTattoos depicts the story of a man who was severely burned in an accident when he was serving in the army. After a year of strenuous treatment, the time finally comes to take off the bandages… and live again. But how? This suggestively portrayed personal tragedy will draw its viewers into the depths of physical and psychological pain.

A cosmonaut will always be a cosmonaut. To the very end. At least that’s what the renowned Estonian filmmaker tries to say in his tragicomic drama. It has been a long time since his elderly cosmonaut was on a mission in space, but to the horror of his relatives, he acts as if he is on a space station even when he’s at home. Director Kaspar Jancis once again brilliantly balances black humour with sympathy for the tragedy of one’s fate.

Each year, selected graduates of French animation schools get a chance to adapt selected poems in professional conditions. This year, it was a collection of poems by Jean Tardieu. One of these adaptations is this humorous and quirkily animated poem named Chanson de la nuit conceived by its author as an escape of residents from a retirement home.

The latest film by the renowned Korean-American filmmaker known for his inventive animation bordering on abstraction and non-narration. His newest project populated by many characters is not just a film. It is intended for screenings in galleries or on building walls. Mechanical events in a multi-storey pyramid depict the principles of human society in the course of history.

The authors let their animated drama take place directly on the pages of a book using stop-motion and traditional hand-drawn animation. Simple but telling drawings wander from page to page, transform, colour themselves and rip the pages of the book in an effort to answer the initial question: what is the opposite of a weapon?

This raw and naturalistic road movie drama takes place somewhere in Eastern Europe. A girl depressed by her life in a joyless town decides to hitch a ride to get away from what she loathes. In the middle of the night, she meets a weirdo named Skinny and together they set out on a journey with no destination. As their ride continues, a particular affection grows between the two of them.

The visitors of last year’s Anifilm had a chance to get to know Romanian director Anca Damian as an author of animated documentaries (Crulic – The Path to Beyond, 2011; The Magic Mountain, 2015). The tale of a dog called Marona (whose mother represents the best of street dogs and whose father the worst of the purebred Dogo Argentino) seems to be an unexpected turn in Damian’s career. In collaboration with Belgian graphic artist Brecht Evens, she managed to create a lavish and colourful world seen through the eyes of the film’s heroine who has to overcome many obstacles in life just like the heroes of the aforementioned documentaries. And in the case of Crulic, also a tragic fate: the charming voyage taking us through all the important events of Marona’s life begins at its very end – a busy street… Marona was the ninth puppy of the litter and it shows. Her reminiscing about her former masters is filled with an honest desire to have a permanent and steady home, melancholic moments, her ability to stay on top of things and her warm kindness. Marona’s Fantastic Tale is a film for children and grown-ups alike, but mainly for people who are not afraid to look at the world through different eyes.

This experimental anidoc toys with multiple animation techniques and styles. The author depicts memories of her brother, who suffered from a serious condition causing short-term memory loss. The director visualised his distorted perception of time and space in a remarkable way.

The music video invites you to a dream, a party and a celebration where we watch a man chase after his true love. This colourful and artistically distinct music video was made by a Taiwanese author looking for paths from poeticalness to vulgarity. His goofy style corresponds with the playful tune.

A surreal journey contemplating the perception of the world, told by a character constantly falling in and out of existence. A music video about the fascination with making sense of the world and the search for your own place in it.

A hallucinogenic and pulsating retro ride through a night-time city distorted by the amount of alcohol in the drivers’ blood. Every viewer of this captivating road music video utilising collages and the visuality of the fading glory of American highways will soon suspect that it will end in an accident of unprecedented proportions.

The City of Jerusalem holds a gun to our head in this head-spinning race through history. This extraordinary, wild and disturbing music video was made by Israeli duo Ofer Winter and Shimon Engel. To correspond with the music, the authors used a combination of black and white urban elements and coloured drawing.

This pleasantly stylised road trip that follows a tiny character who is trying to fix an old cassette recorder and meets a friend on the way was made in a Japanese co-production by a Russian illustrator and animator who studied in Germany. Her clip is characterised by a childishly naive atmosphere and fairy-tale motifs.

This grotesque and humorous music video follows the story of a spoiled boy who writes letters to Santa every year asking to become president. After sending hundreds of letters, the boy gets his wish. From that moment a terrible orange light is cast across mankind. One of few examples of a music video commenting on contemporary politics.

Since their formation, the Argentinian band builds their image around elaborate animated music videos made by studio Rudo. In another one of their clips made in anime style, the authors work with intensifying tempo and suspense. Three old friends have a ritual to welcome a new member of the “cool kid” gang. A get-together with past summers that brings back childhood memories.

In her film, a student of the University of West Bohemia makes a humorous commentary on her grandpa’s journeys across Africa. To portray his memories and give a vivid picture of the African countryside and wilderness, she chose plastic in natural brown and beige colours.

This film inspired by world-renowned artists and the music of contemporary Czech composer Martin Klusák is a collaboration of five directors. Among the animated artworks, we can find traces of Joan Miró and Edward Hopper. Film from the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen.

This 3D black and white film by a director from the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen visualises a metaphor of dealing with problems in our lives. Using a minimalist setting and score, the director starts a cycle of escapes from cages in which we inevitably find ourselves again and again.

This film bordering on an experimental music video was made in the animation studio of the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague during a workshop led by the authors of this year’s festival jingle Dávid Štumpf and Michaela Mihályiová. The film is characterised by a colour palette that the authorial team limited almost exclusively to red, blue and white.

Tones of Idyll, one of the lesser known compositions by Leoš Janáček, are harmonically accompanied by the atmosphere of Brno where Janáček lived and worked. Using pastels to animate her dreamlike film, Miriam Obršlíková sensitively managed to capture the atmosphere and create an impression of an idyllic place.

Even though the period fashion was apparently against their love, there was no need to panic or give up! This humorous film from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague dealing with difficulties that noblemen and noblewomen had when meeting each other during the Rococo, was made with puppets and excellent stop-motion animation.

Professor Jiří Barta, renowned Czech graphic artist, director and animator, has been teaching at the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art of the University of West Bohemia since 2009. For his 70th birthday, students of the Studio of Animation and Interactive Art made a film with several techniques inspired by his own films and even with his own participation.

You will find out what Matouš Valchář saw during his Erasmus study stay in Budapest in his animated journal. You will see how he animated, prayed and longed to return to Prague (however amazing his experience in Budapest might have been) because his friends were at home in the Czech Republic.  

This film is an honest film testimony about a semester at a university with which many students juggling responsibilities, obligations and deadlines of various papers can identify. Its simplified artistic style reflects the minimalist result of all the attempts to finally start doing something.

Gedeon and his mate Almerina are here for everyone who likes to have a good laugh or cry and who loves legends and adventures. Together, they wander through the land and tell incredible stories reminiscent of Italian Commedia dell’Arte. Thanks to their tales, we learn about a story from a time when bears ruled the Sicilian mountains. One day, hunters kidnap Tonio, son of the bear king Leonzio.  To find his long-lost son and food to survive the winter, the great bear king leads his clan down from the mountains and into the world of men. After escaping terrible monsters and defeating an evil duke, the bears and men live together in peace – for a time. The film is based on the popular children’s book of the same name written by Dino Buzzati and was designed and made by the renowned Italian illustrator and comic book artist Lorenzo Mattotti. His feature debut bears his unique artistic signature using symbolism and expressionism. Despite this extravagant style that was surely demanding for animators, Mattotti managed to tell a thrilling story as unusual as its artistic style. The result is an extraordinary family film with no parallels in contemporary cinema.

anthropocene investigates the effects of global industrial capitalism. Hamburg port serves as an example of mass consumption, pollution and exploitation. Through the sequential animation of satellite images, the extent of human interference in natural ecosystems is radically depicted. Repeated sequences symbolize the unstoppability of the global machinery as well as the loss of all individuality in mass production.

In a purely abstract way the film deals with a core idea of the Common Good Economy model. Both visual patterns and the ensemble’s voices are tied up in hierarchical behaviour, which restrains the full potential and mobility of each individual element. Soon the matrix pattern breaks out, and connections and directions are lost, resulting in entropic disorder.

Renowned American solitaire of 3D computer animation returns with another film starring a plastically perfect character. This time, the protagonist is a man named Jack. Jack is naked. Jack is pretending to play guitar. Jack looks silly and vulnerable? Jack, Jack, Jack. Jack everywhere.

The Serbian author originally reflects the passage of time in her old house. She uses photogrammetry to show us the house’s surroundings and its interior. Thanks to the chosen technique, this exploration is fluctuating and volatile. But the deconstructed architecture has a captivating visual and, thanks to real sounds, also aural power.

Twelve animated projections combine to develop a rhythmic dialogue exploring the intrinsic relationship between sound and image using 16mm film, paint and a projector.
Responding to a hand-drawn soundtrack, each projection is individually created by painting and scratching directly on 16mm film stock.

Film documents the presence of urban art in various neighbourhoods of Valencia, Spain, between 2018 and 2019. In the film these pieces of ephemeral art are animated, connecting each image in continuity like the frames of a film. All these faces look at us with widely opened eyes, as if they tell us that we exist, but we might not exist – and the world would go on.

A ball goes through various gear mechanisms and tracks. It appears and disappears in various pits without an apparent meaning. As the rhythm of the cycle accelerates, the viewers recognize a hidden life of the entire apparatus. The American author of this short film makes use of a minimalist artistic style which he eventually turns into an unusual dance.

During a boring PowerPoint presentation, statistical diagrams are breaking free from the strait-jacket of their coordinates. A trip into the sensual world of statistics begins. Pie charts are melting, arrow diagrams twisting, scatter plots, bar graphs and stock market curves join in a collective climax.

A secluded house in the countryside. And in it? A family cocktail of love, care, shared history and all kinds of gadgets and unfinished things. Or a space for living out the rest of one’s life peacefully. This simple documentary stop-motion animation pays tribute to the author’s parents and the things they left here. The director finds life and a special kind of beauty in them.

An experimental animation using only microscopic images of xylem, one of the two types of transport tissue in vascular plants. Thanks to a rapid montage and disturbing score, the plant cellulose creates a hypnotic symphony. Under the influence of this audio-visual stream, the viewers can easily get lost and become unsure whether they are watching the inside of a plant, cosmic matter or a close-up of a curtain.

A pregnant scientist becomes a mother, two men draw and a cat observes butterflies. Their stories merge to form a dreamlike celebration of rebirth and transformation. The film created almost entirely with optical illusions presents the viewers with many riddles. But at the same time, it slowly reveals details of a noir story.

The Japanese master of abstract dynamic animation returns with a whirlwind of colourful images pulsating in a breakneck tempo of experimental music. It is hard to find any connecting motifs. A human mind is unable to comprehend it as it’s watching the world’s first animation made to be watched by chimpanzees. Just this once, we will show it to you humans.

Serial Parallels approaches Hong Kong’s built environment from the conceptual perspective of celluloid film, by applying the technique of film animation to the photographic image. The city’s signature architecture of horizon-eclipsing housing estates is reimagined as parallel rows of film strips.

This German paella is everything but a simply digestible delicacy. The collage style of the experimental film includes hand-drawn, cutout and 3D animated ingredients. Political motifs alternate with natural motifs. But there is a nuclear threat looming from the sky.

In his film essay, the Japanese director takes us to places leaking life. This mesmerising film works with a seemingly real environment and things, but everything undergoes a detailed paintbrush transformation. Leaking life is thus manifested both in the content of the film (an overflowing glass, an outflow) and thanks to dripping colours also in its form.

This visually captivating, purely authorial film, entirely without dialogue, is a thrilling story of a young man. Accompanied by his bird friend, the film’s main protagonist tries to outrun a strange shadow through atmospheric and mesmerising sceneries. In order to get home, they must cross an inhospitable island full of bizarre spectacles. Their lonely motorcycle ride through a changing landscape full of magical encounters and unexpected obstacles is a trial they can’t back out of.

The film offers various interpretations – it can be an adventurous story for children but also an existential drama or a vision of the afterlife for grown-up viewers. The author also skilfully balances between fantasy and fairy-tale.

Away is curious also in that it is the work of a single filmmaker. One could expect to see long closing credits and the name of a renowned director. But Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis was born in 1994 and Away is his feature debut. He is the author of the story, artistic style, animation, music and the film’s producer. This film filled with symbols (but not overfull) and metaphorical scenes is divided into several chapters and may remind viewers of a computer game.

This surreal story about loneliness, love and jealousy is an adaptation of a story by Roland Topor made by renowned director Izabela Plucińska. The director sticks to her original claymation style that she stretches to the extreme. In her film, a man tries to chase away loneliness by eating. When he finally finds love, it happens to be inseparable from his own body. This strange story has an even stranger ending.

The protagonist of this story is a child named Oscar who grows in his parents’ garden. Each of the parents has their own idea of what gender the child is. This peculiar and artistically original film about the search and subsequent acceptance of one’s own identity was made by a Brazilian director who studied at the prestigious French school La Poudrière.

This humorous and ironic film was made largely in the form of a music video. The author depicts a situation when the native Americans are finally returned their land and the immigrants now have to return to where their ancestors came from. A film packed with stereotypes illustrating the absurd discussion about sending all people back to their home countries.

One night, Reine, a young loner, sees among the urban chaos a moving oneness that seems alive, like some sort of guide. This artistically refined and atmospheric film was made by Adrien Merigeau, a French filmmaker who worked in Ireland for several years. Apart from making his own films, he worked on the Oscar-nominated hits The Secret of Kells (2009) and Song of the Sea (2014).

American director and animator of Czech origin Paul Fierlinger (once again in collaboration with his wife Sandra) presents another biographical film. In this documentary film based on his own personal memories of his long-time close friend, actor and voice actor Jim Thurman, Fierlinger recounts a number of unbelievable events they experienced together.

This surreal and dreamlike film is set at a housing estate much like those in the Czech Republic. We see the film’s protagonist at one of the many balconies in a moment when she has to say farewell to the seemingly boring place. The housing estate suddenly changes into an intimate setting with a unique charm.

A tragicomic episode from the life of a man who lives under the impression that he’s an Eskimo. Our hero goes ice fishing without realising that he happens to be in a supermarket. The author used precisely animated puppets and turned the essentially sad story into a slapstick comedy.

Characters as if taken from the edges of papers from boring meetings (or lectures) participate in a rough wrestling match in which Mr. Businessman faces multiple opponents. Does he have a shot at winning? And when did childhood turn into a series of lift rides and meetings with seemingly perfect people?

A combination of organic natural motifs and mechanical systems brought to us in a single complex fantasy world by a student of the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest (MOME). When a natural source of life energy runs dry, the situation needs to be resolved quickly. Technology needs to step in to renew the automatic and harmonic cycle of things.

Migraine is a common but often ignored and underestimated illness that has effects on a person’s life that most people usually can’t understand. Timm Völkner presents it in the form of a love letter that is – by means of a symbolic artistic interpretation – addressed to this most loyal of friends of many of us.

On the planet Gunja Doron-x, the punishment for killing the mother of a child that won’t stop crying can only be one thing. Nonnonanni travels to Earth. Will she succeed as a mother? This sci-fi film with horror sequences is a critical view of the demands that (not only) Korean society places on mothers.

People of the Nicobar Islands believe that a carved wooden figure called kareau can drive away evil spirits causing an illness. This custom served as an inspiration for a student of the Royal College of Art in London whose aunt attributed an exact measurement to her illness. The result is a gentle animated film in a documentary style.

The visitors of Anifilm had a chance to see Petre Tomadze’s colourfully expressive artistic style last year. This year, the Georgian director returns with a tragicomic story from an apartment building witnessed by a man spending his evening sitting on a balcony, listening to a gramophone and observing his surroundings.

Polar Barry is a polar bear and a popular youtuber from the North Pole. What do his followers think about global warming? How should polar bears prepare for it? In the form of a YouTube video, the director of this film explores pressing current issues and uses the answers of real people.

The French director’s graduate film follows an expat in a country where no one understands her and she doesn’t understand the language or local customs. Will she have to deal with queue tickets and vitally important signs on the toilets all by herself? This humorous film will tell you how to survive in Dutchgaria. 

As Mrs. Rochňa says: “Every grown-up can only put up with so much and it can sometimes happen that parents erupt with anger at their endlessly curious children. Or even at one another during arguments. Even if they don’t mean it.” One way or another, arguments bring nothing pleasant or fair to little Pavlík’s life and they are certainly not something he understands. And so, the protagonist of this feature film for children inspired by a show broadcast by Czech Television decides to make a radical change in the everyday lives of families with little children – he steals all their questions. By doing so, he manages to solve the apparent problem complicating the lives of grown-ups. But he also causes real trouble to the whole staff of TVMiniUni! The wisest television channel for children suddenly has no questions to answer and its director Mr. Vrána has to deal with desperate parents whose children have lost all their curiosity. Add to it a botched teleportation experiment by Flegy the Rabbit and Pavlík’s malevolent house servant Mrs. Konvičková and the TV staff of animal puppets suddenly has their hands, paws and claws full. Will Pavlík’s parents, played by Barbora Poláková and Jiří Havelka, find a way to fix things between them? And what will happen to bitter Mrs. Konvičková, portrayed by Pavel Liška? A film for children about the importance of mutual understanding and patience.

In a world where gravity changes constantly, you have to find something to keep you grounded. This artistically original film by a Bolivian author takes us to a disturbing world where we observe the fight of its inhabitants for self-fulfilment and satisfaction.

The Austrian filmmaker based this captivating anidoc vividly portraying the fate of an ill woman on a case study by the famous neuropsychologist Oliver Sacks, author of the book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. The director used the original audio recording of the patient and emphasised the strength of her unfortunate story.

Ben and Kat are becoming adults, so according to their village tradition it’s time to go see Lake Fountain. This film was originally made as a sci-fi adventure but eventually found itself in disrupting the established genre rules. It also happily disrupts the viewers’ expectations beginning with the character stylisation and ending with dialogue and the storytelling form.

For his graduate film, Thibault Llonch chose an unusual setting (gentlemen’s toilets) and a not particularly common genre (musical). This unexpected place hosts a magnificent musical performance with a dynamic choreography.

A dream journey that travels through a room where four characters are trapped, through moments in their lives and through the symbol of death that connected them together. The film’s author used various animation techniques (from CGI to sand animation) and left this peculiar experiment open to many interpretations.

The Israeli author based this refreshing visual pun on footage from the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station that she enhanced and “embellished” with animation. In her film, the hectic multicultural space of the gargantuan bus station brightens up with colours and evokes many associations. The film deals with loneliness, fear, identity, strangeness and affection.

Hedi is experiencing strange things. While her granddaughter is visiting, she suddenly embarks on a hiking journey, to the deepest parts of the Alps, revealing the reason for her devoted attachment to her hiking shoes. The author managed to portray this tragicomic story from her life with humour and detachment without belittling it.

A string of unexpected, comic and even absurd scenes from the life of a property caretaker in which the main roles are played by his frustrated wife and a depressed deer. The events take such a turn that it is soon clear that the film’s main protagonist cannot expect a happy end. The film has a simple but very original artistic style.

One morning an eclectic mix of people face the everyday battle – such as work, school and dish-washing. As the day progresses, their relationships are tested and ultimately their capacity to cope. This film is probably the first Icelandic participation in Anifilm’s international competition. It is full of more or less absurd scenes linked by rough Nordic humour.

A parable on the demise of a civilisation that evolved into such perfection that its destruction is inevitable even though the passengers on a luxurious ship tirelessly try to convince themselves otherwise. What happens when people ignore all warning signs? This unusual CGI animated European film is nothing like classic American 3D films.

The directorial debut of Colombian graphic artist David Carrizales is a Spanish co-production that will captivate the viewers with strange black and white spectacles. The author uses humour and irony to explore a single thought: it is said that every person is different and unique, but with regards to the sound our bodies make, we are actually all identical.

This impressive, even depressing family drama was surprisingly made by a literature graduate who learned how to animate at workshops. In his film, a girl tries to convince her little brother that unlike her, he doesn’t belong to the family as he comes from a nearby swamp. Consumed by sibling rivalry, the girl doesn’t realise what will happen when – despite his initial resistance – her brother starts accepting the role forced upon him by her.

This Japanese and South Korean co-production is an ambitious film balancing between cinema, abstraction and graphic art. It is a colourful film with lively animation based on Henri Bergson’s book Creative Evolution and the modern art history, which inspired Robert Delaunay’s abstract art works.

Swedish filmmaker Niki Lindroth von Bahr specialising in puppet animation presents six peculiar scenes depicting our modern age. Precisely and smoothly animated mostly animal puppets act out scenes that we should remember as they are – in a way – lullabies preceding an inevitable catastrophe.

Artistically refined film Carrousel is a Belgian-Czech co-production. A woman lives her routine in a small, very well organised system, a small microcosm. The arrival of newcomers disrupts that routine, she feels attacked, withdraws into herself and becomes aggressive to defend her way of life, to the point of hurting others.

Another humorous and original film by the Estonian director living in Croatia. Her latest film depicts an unusual situation: a muscular wolf, father of a family, loses his well-paid engineering job and decides to make money in porn. But it is not easy to find his bearings in this new world and to keep a secret from his wife. But the wife has her own secrets…

Pilot episode of the planned series by Filip Pošivač and Barbora Valecká. After the success of their puppet film Deep in Moss, they decided to switch from classical puppets to half-relief puppets. They also removed all dialogues but remained faithful to an easily understandable story for young viewers.

Sequel of a successful series about a White Lady who works as a babysitter. The Černý family puts her in charge of their uncontrollable quadruplets with whom Mrs. White works miracles and turns everything into a big adventure. The original artistic style of the project was created by the illustrator and writer using the artistic name Vhrsti.

Honza and his little black ram Čert experience many fairy-tale adventures. They are not classical heroes, but thanks to their shrewdness, playfulness, ingenuity and courage, they always figure out what to do. Together, they are a likeable and original duo, perhaps also thanks to the fact that the style of the series is inspired by Josef Lada.

This anidoc based on a legend from the Second World War tells the tragic story of a young woman who chose a very unusual method of resistance – perhaps because she had nothing to lose. The authors explore not only revenge, but also heroism and martyrdom without condemning the heroine from Třeboň or interpreting her story in any way.

Much like in the real world, everything in the latest film by the classic of Czech hand-drawn animation has its dark side. The author elaborates on that quite literally as his film has two parts: an optimistic part taking place on one side of the paper and a pessimistic part taking place on the other.

After his film The Potato Eaters (2014), graduate of the Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín Martin Kukal presents his dynamic film set in a peculiar little shop at the end of the world. A sensitive animated short film about the insensitive human world.

Handymen Pat and Mat known as the heroes of the popular series A je to! (And that’s it!) rank among the classics of Czech animation. Their stories follow in the footsteps of traditional Czech animation – meticulous and yet appropriately stylised and visually expressive without using dialogues. The puppets were designed by Vladimír Jiránek and, to this day, their design remains largely unchanged. Pat and Mat boldly explore intricate but all the more interesting solutions to more or less banal problems. As tirelessly as the protagonists, director Marek Beneš films new episodes of this popular series with his company Patmat Film s.r.o. That means that we can regularly look forward to anthology films for children and grown-ups consisting of multiple episodes of Pat and Mat put together. To our beloved handymen, no obstacle is insurmountable and no challenge too big. They also keep in touch with the modern age and use technology to expand the possibilities of their DIY exploits. Pat and Mat are so carried away by their original ideas that they can’t see the catastrophes their work causes. This time, they want to build a car wash, use drones to create a flying machine, make homemade cider and popcorn and invent an automatic pancake flipper.

Once upon a nighttime, something happened close to a village near Prague. With a specifically naive artistic style, a student of the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague tells the story of three friends who – for economic reasons – decided to walk and – uneconomically – stopped in a pub in Srbsko, a village near Prague.

Noctuelle takes his job extremely seriously. He is convinced that there is purpose in his craft. He has no doubts that he is on the right side. After all, his magical butterflies bring people good dreams! But apart from good-hearted butterflies, another pair of wings flaps through the silence of the night – wings of a dangerous bat with dark intents.

This experimental film was made by a student of the Academy of Arts, Architecture Design in Prague. According to her own words, the director was inspired by the undiscovered secrets of the universe. To create the visual style of her film, she used computer programmes and collected numerical data that served as a basis for the film’s soundtrack built upon their exact sound representation and conversion.

The director, who studied animation in Pilsen and the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, presents a critical animated essay on the global status of contemporary society. By means of 2D animation and drawing, it explores – among other things – neoliberalism and the necessity of endless growth.

Tomáš Červenka made his experimental film with 2D and 3D computer animation. He created rich structures that use colours and textures to bring contrast to a background with a message formulated by gleaming words.

The protagonist of this film made by a Croatian filmmaker who studied at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague is a young woman named Sylvie. Sylvie’s life beats to the rhythm of responsibilities. And she is efficient, flawless, wonderful and – tired. A small accident happens and everything changes. Or maybe not.

Thanks to his vivid imagination, the protagonist of this puppet film verifies that a big city can offer adventures as wild as a jungle. This film was made in collaboration with MAUR Film by a student of the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague who used paper props that are naturally reminiscent of the box-like cityscape.

In her graduation film, a student of the University of Ostrava uses aquarelle colours to bring bizarre creatures from the past to life. A childish fascination with dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures meets a strictly managed institution where everything has its place.

The film’s grumpy old hero does not particularly enjoy the company of a squirrel, a bird and a hare. But a ferocious storm is approaching that will shake his conscience as well as the feelings in his vascular bundles. This film fable about the importance of compassion and finding friends was made by a student of the Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín.

A young hunter is preparing for a crucial moment in his life. What happens when a fired arrow misses its target? And can the miss mean that the hunter in fact passes the rite of passage? This film by a student of the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague characterised by an impressive contrastive artistic style meditates upon the meaning of a mistake.

In her film combining stop-motion cutout animation with drawing, a student of the Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín takes us to a natural history museum. Where else can you embark on an adventure with real dinosaurs? It’s time to leave the pages of the books and go out into the field.

On his perilous journey from Troy back to Ithaca, Odysseus faced many dangers. The monstrous Scylla and deep-dwelling Charybdis were among them. Or was there a different ending? The film humorously plays with Greek mythology and the idiom about a situation when a man finds himself between two evils.

The author of this film, a student of the University of Ostrava, was inspired by her hometown. Her hero Emma doesn’t like living in a big grey world. It also seems that boredom, responsibilities and numbness have affected her mom as well. In an unguarded moment, she loses Emma from her sight. Do they have a chance of overcoming the city and finding each other?

The bonfire blazes and around it sits a group of children. Unlike the others, Clementine is not enjoying the evening. Telling scary stories is not her favourite pastime. When it turns out that she is easily scared, she gets upset, leaves the others and goes back to the camp through the woods.

This unusual, black and white, minimalist and yet cheeky slapstick from the American prairies was made as an official music video for the song from the album House of Sugar. The author used likeable stylisation of characters ironically reminiscent of characters from classic cartoons that experience various unexpected adventures.

Very Noise is the synthesis of many testimonies of stroke victims that the authors have collected over the past few years. This experimental 3D computer animation is an excellent example showing that CGI offers many more possibilities than filmmakers generally explore and that its shapeability can be used to add unexpected absurdity to images.

Bathwell in Clerkentime completes the trilogy about cuckoos from Clerkenwell going nuts. In this third and final episode they face mid-life crises, marriage problems, raising kids and alcohol addiction.  For the conclusion of his trilogy, the author used his signature silhouette style. 

“By train, by car, by bike, or by sharks, the cats are coming!” This playful and rhythmical music video for March of the Thinking Machines was made by versatile Berlin-based artist Adi Gelbart. In his music video, he exploits the endless maniacal popularity of cats of all shapes and sizes and uses photographs to put them in leading roles in a thrilling adventure in which humanity doesn’t stand a chance against the cat invasion.

There’s a small forgotten village, a place that feels like it was left in the attic. Everything and everyone are waiting, staring, sinking into the ground. And then there’s a march… This originally stylised music video characterised by visual thickening of the complete image is a collaboration of two illustrators and filmmakers from Hamburg.

This captivating music video building on a strong film-like atmosphere was done in frame-by-frame animation and was visually influenced by works of Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage. The author gained experience in the famous Polish studio Se-Ma-For.

This lively animated music video full of visual ideas and original stylisation explores the helplessness of people trapped in a hectic age and everyday stereotype. Where else to run than the future and how else to run than in your mind?

The Closing Door is a visually attractive music video for the song of a popular Irish singer that takes you on a mysterious journey with the simple movements of a brush and black ink. Its Estonian author uses a black and white style and frames the music video with abstract sequences.

A peaceful family evening is disturbed by an intruder and it soon turns out that monsters are around every corner. This visually inventive and ambitiously animated music video takes place in multiple dimensions connected by a young boy’s mind. Distinctive graphic artist Ugo Bienvenu alludes to the visuality of pop-culture phenomena such as the film Heavy Metal or the series Stranger Things.

Music is their life and the relentless sound of drums and wailing of guitars has always been their passion. At least since the moment they plugged them into an amp. But that was hardly yesterday. And after that, it actually wasn’t undying love at first sight – every proper band has its ups and down. But the most important thing is finding your sound. This independent film based on a manga by Hiroyuki Ohashi depicts the story of this future musical legend currently dealing with teething problems. Its minimalist artistic style is underlined by the film’s dry humour, and static shots alternate with exaggerated emotional reactions typical for mainstream romantic and comedy anime films starring high school kids. Director Kenji Iwaisawa spent seven years working on his crazy and completely hand-drawn film about the power of music and the need for self-fulfilment. Its artistic style respects the original, but in many scenes it transforms itself into energetic and wild drawings, surreal spectacles and rotoscoping. Whether you are an aficionado of various artistic styles, a die-hard rock fan or an alternative music fan, come and see the first show of the band Kobujutsu.