Martin Vandas

Joko is a young man who works on the cistern, he is the only breadwinner in a family. On his second anniversary of employment, Joko and his colleagues meet with foreign delegates who force boy and the rest to… carry on their back. At first, Joko is against and rebels against this humiliating activity. However, under the pressure and desire to earn good money, he subsides.

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Far, far away, endless fields overgrown with weeds stretch to infinity. A beautiful garden is hidden in the middle of them, and it is carefully looked after by the Gardener. Her endurance is put to the test when a severe storm breaks out and her garden is flooded with seeds of weeds. This innocent encounter slowly grows into a life-and-death struggle. The Gardener tries her best to defeat this elemental force, but her fear and her desire to resist the intruders at all costs puts her entire world at risk.

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24th February 2022, my boyfriend and I fled Kyiv to go to Irpin. We spent 10 days in a blockaded city and just managed to escape with the last evacuation convoy. Time passed, but the feeling that I died in Irpin has never left me since.

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Electra rethinks her 10th birthday, mixing memories with imagination and hidden dreams. Isolated in her fantasy world full of made-up busty dolls, plastic men’s body parts, juicy strawberries and dentist tools, she builds up her own relationships with her body and sexuality. Diving deeper and deeper into her childhood memories, she experiences again rebellion against her mother and mixed feelings for her father. Electra has to go through the most painful memories to let her suppressed feelings come out. In the end, she is ready to reveal what has really happened during her 10th birthday.

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Blind Mimi and Lisa are best friends. They learn from each other to approach the world and its diversity with generosity, tolerance, and openness. In a new story, titled The Garden, a yellow container is installed in the yard of their house which their neighbours soon start filling with old and broken things. Lisa is curious what Mimi would be getting rid of and is surprised to see she doesn´t throw away anything. For Mimi, all old things at home are her anchors and little certainties in the dark. Lisa decides to throw away her old red ball. But it falls behind the container and thanks to it the girls discover a secret door leading to the beautiful Garden of the miraculous Magic Maker, who takes them on a quick trip through all the seasons.

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Suzie is a little girl who goes with her mother and dad to an allotment outside the city. One day she meets a black dog and discovers a mysterious garden. Who is it that lives there? Suzie is a little afraid. But what to do when you are afraid of someone, but you find their key on the path?

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In his film at the intersection of an experiment and a poetic documentary, Milan Klepikov looks at the end of the world as defined by the poet Petr Král, who is convinced that children are born into a world which has in fact already ended. Trying to understand the young generation’s viewpoint and to capture the end of cinema as we know if, Klepikov wildly chases and captures visual and auditive input, which he combines into a film sketchbook consisting of fragments of the lives of young people who apparently have been through the end of the world, but who still have many years ahead of them.

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In a small town plunged into darkness, two children, Kyona and Adriel, are separated from their parents and, facing the path of exile alone, embark on a heroic journey that will take them from childhood to adolescence, in search of refuge, peace and the hope of finding their family.

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Paolo Piangino is a quiet adult man who lives alone with his cat and loves to cry, because his tears are his happiness. When he feels sad, tears comfort him, when he is happy, his tears give him even more joy. One day people in his town are amazed to find that flowers grow out of Paolo’s tears and thanks to his tears Paolo becomes famous. All his compatriots from the town are excited, they all invite him to visit, hoping for some lucky tears from him. But Paolo is soon fed up with all that hustle and bustle. Secretely he steals away and all that is left after him are several flowers. The people in the town, saddened by his departure, cry bitter tears for him. Who knows, maybe one day even their tears will grow into flowers.

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Will the father-son relationship make the trip into the wild more enjoyable? Are the children really cruel or just playing innocent games? What will the teacher do when everything is already synchronized? Three stories set on a mysterious island. The animated film by Marta Prokopová and Michal Blaško sheds memories of childhood and adolescence into narcotic images and suggestive sounds.

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September 1989 in the GDR. With the change of the general mood in the country, the life of 12-year-old FRITZI changes as well. Her best friend Sophie has fled with her mother through Hungary to West Germany and the only thing Fritzi has left is Sophie's little dog Sputnik. But Fritzi misses Sophie just as much as her little four-legged friend does. Therefore, she decides to bring Sputnik to Sophie. But there is only one way to get there: over the strictly guarded border. A very dangerous adventure for a 12-year-old girl and a small dog...

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Lucie Sunková’s short film The Tree is a metaphorical story about the parallels in lives of people and trees, a lyrical poem about birth and death, about the flow of our time and the nature surrounding us, a parable about parenthood and crossing the boundaries of a human (not only) life. It is a story about relations, seeming hopelessness and a happy promise. Used paint-on-glass technique, a pure poetic means of expression ideal for a story like this, forms another metaphoric layer of the film withs its laboriousness and graphic style. The budget of this co-production reached almost 150 thousand EUR and was almost evenly divided between MAUR film and French production company Les Films de l’Arlequin. Both sides were supported by their respective national funds – State Cinematography Fund in the Czech Republic and the prestigious national fund CNC – Centre National du Cinema in France.

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Documentary about the famous Polish director Agnieszka Holland and her relationship to Czechoslovakia, based on two storylines: one depicting the life of Agnieszka Holland during her studies in Prague towards the end of the 1960’s, her friends, her participation in a student strike and her arrest for supporting the dissident movement and anti-state tendencies, and the second one - following her return there.

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A man becomes lured into a fictional game his ex-girlfriend has initiated. Sexually ensnared by her, and now realizing the fragility of the border between the real and the imagined, he begins to unravel. He convinces himself that if he can only write an ending to his life story, he can regain control of his life. But playing with fiction is not an innocent game…

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The film contains three Jan Werich's fairy tales, each directed by one artist. The first story sets out to the Sumava mountains in Southern Bohemia to find out whether Ogres ever lived there. The middle tale The Hat and the Little Jay Feather concerns a king who sends his three sons to bring back a hat he left at a tavern when he was young. The third and longest fairy tale Reason and Luck is about the two virtues of the title try to prove their importance by changing the life of a pig herder named Louis. Written by

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Jan Balej's animated film One Night in One City (2007) from the Czech Republic. Very little dialogue throughout, but instead a rich world of sounds and music which more than match the detailed animation and curious vignettes that create the film.

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The sequel to the successful film Fimfárum by Jan Werich. Four brand new stories “for clever children and clever adults” from the popular book written by Jan Werich. Břetislav Pojar introduces the story of little Tom Thumb full of twists and adventure. Aurel Klimt brings to life three brothers, The Hunchbacks of Damascus, re-creating the atmosphere of the Middle East and variety of the oriental storytelling. Vlasta Pospíšilová’s Three Sisters and One Ring shows a rural Decameron-like manual on how to enchant one’s loved ones with a mere ring and Jan Balej lets his characters Marek and Kouba re-live an ancient fairy-tale about greed, devils and natural phenomena in his The Sea, Uncle, Why is it Salty?

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Humorous as well as educational stories about magical and everyday problems, about devils, miracles, ordinary human vices and wisdom. The graphic design of the stories reflects the humour and the atmosphere of the stories Fimfárum, When the Leaves Fall from the Oak, Franta the Fearless, A Dream Come True, and Greedy Barka, that were recorded by Jan Werich on an LP in the 1960’s and published in a book called Fimfarum.

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The film based on the poem by Aimé Césair was created for a series of one-minute-long films inspired by the poems of this French poet commemorating the 100th anniversary of his birth. The French original was narrated by Jacques Martial with music composed by François Causse and produced by MAUR film for the company La Maison Garage. The Czech version was translated by the French poet and translator Bertrand Schmitt and narrated for the cinema by actor Viktor Preiss. The film was animated with the demanding technique of oil painted on glass directly in front of the camera and the production in the Anima studio took almost three months during this spring. The same technique will be used for an animated co-production film directed by the French director Florence Miailhe with Lucie Sunková as the main animator.

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The film tells the story of a very important social problem: civic engagement. It is not tied to any particular political system or period. There is a stylized, anonymous, universal character living in an unspecified space. Everything is made of paper using the origami technique. The character does not want to solve the problems of the world around him, he thinks that he would lose his peace. But as a result, with this hidden from the news of the world, he gradually begins to sacrifice not only his property, his space, but also his freedom.

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Ivan Wernisch wrote about his poems: “My poems are what they are, and I would not improve them with any commentary.” One of the most important living poets, Ivan Wernisch, with his nostalgic, railway and blowing poem, inspired director David Súkup to its distinctive animated interpretation. Alongside a visual tribute to the author in the form of a railway employee and the phenomenon of coffee in Czech poetry, a distinctive animated film was made, which shows the intimate closeness of animation and poetry and tries to bring new readers to poetry in an attractive form.

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Middle Ages, year 1077. Sant’Anselmo, a grumpy hermit living on the top of an icy mountain, is accidentally dragged downhill by Ranin, a strange wild child with whom - unwillingly – he will navigate the foggy river Po among monstrous creatures, crumbling boats, ancient legends and strange companions, in search of a legendary giant pumpkin and, perhaps, a mysterious feeling called affection.

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16-years-old orphan Nab lives since birth on a huge ship, which is at the same time a factory and permanent home to several thousand people. For violating the rules, he is banished and put ashore in the Duluong Islands, a harsh place where winter is hard to survive. But thanks to the discovery of gold deposits, Eskimos live there with adventurers, criminals, and local hunters. The only law that rules here is the law of the strongest. The town is called Rosentaal and the plains beyond are full of packs of wolves. Nab leaves the ship with a box of locksmith tools and sarcophagus containing a mysterious living mummy of an Eskimo whose future and destiny will become a mission of duty for Nab.

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