When a young boy hides into a wall clock during playtime, his life shrinks into a single game of hide and seek. He becomes an old man with lots of memories of his childhood that manifest themselves in surreal scenes and tell a story about something which concerns every single one of us. Hide N Seek is Bára Halířová’s graduation film from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.
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.
The thoughts of the first president of the Czech Republic come to life in this student film made by a filmmaker from the Russian city of Magnitogorsk who, after finishing animation studies in Yekaterinburg, moved to Zlín to get his master’s degree at the Tomas Bata University. In this film, Havel’s inspirational thoughts are underlined by a clear and straightforward artistic style.
The real story of Zdenko and his wife, set in 1950, follows the couple’s dramatic escape from Czechoslovakia. The danger that awaits them doesn’t lurk in dense woods, but rather on the exposed marshlands of the Czechoslovak border they need to cross on their journey.
This ambitious and artistically mesmerising film is set in the spring of 1937 in the nostalgic atmosphere of a seaside town. The director depicts a single tragic event from the perspective of four different women. In this unusual concept, their stories intertwine and all four of them – a pilot, a postwoman, a shop assistant and a singer – are involved in the tragedy.
Another captivating film by one of greats of traditional animation, Georges Schwizgebel. His suggestive animated ride is based on Goethe's poem, Erlking (Erlkönig), and the music of Franz Schubert and Ferenc Liszt. A man and his sick son ride through the forest and the delirious child thinks that they are following the Erlking.
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 film uses a very demanding technique of sand animation to depict a scene from an Iranian village. We see it through the eyes of an atypical observer who remains hidden for a long time. The authors draw attention to landmines that remained present, active and very dangerous in their country after the war.
