Ivo Špalj

Disciplined Italian composer Antonio Salieri becomes consumed by jealousy and resentment towards the hedonistic and remarkably talented young Salzburger composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

A darkly brilliant stop-motion adaptation of The Pied Piper of Hamelin about a plague of rats that punish townsfolk corrupt with greed. One of the most ambitious Czech animation projects of the 1980s, notable for its unusual dark art direction, innovative animation techniques and use of a fictitious language.

A very free adaptation of Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus", Goethe's "Faust" and various other treatments of the old legend of the man who sold his soul to the devil. A nondescript man is lured by a strange map into a sinister puppet theatre, where he finds himself immersed in an indescribably weird version of the play, blending live actors, clay animation and giant puppets.

A man obsessed with crossword puzzles ignores his wife's desire for intimacy

After a fictitious marriage with a Russian emigrant, Cellisten Louka, a Czech man, must suddenly take responsibility for her son. However, it’s not long before the communication barrier is broken between the two new family members.

When a childless couple learn that they cannot have children, it causes great distress. To ease his wife's pain, the man finds a piece of root in the backyard and chops it and varnishes it into the shape of a child. However the woman takes the root as her baby and starts to pretend that it is real.

A quiet young English girl named Alice finds herself in an alternate version of her own reality after chasing a white rabbit. She becomes surrounded by living inanimate objects and stuffed dead animals, and must find a way out of this nightmare - no matter how twisted or odd that way must be.

A king and his three daughters must contend with the hairy wiles of the "ugly bastard" known as Omnifurous.

An adaptation of the 1764 work of the same name, the first Gothic novel. In this mockumentary, the amateur archaeologist Dr. Vozáb has set to prove that the supernatural ghost love story takes place not in Italy, but in Otranto Castle near Náchod in Czechia.

On summer vacation a young teenager finds himself hanging out alone on the streets of his neighbourhood, all his friends having gone to the country with their parents. Near his home he meets a disturbing character, a drug pusher looking for clients, who introduces him to an artificial paradise. The teenager discovers a seductive and terrifying world that frequently draws him back to his neighbour.

A man sits down to watch a football match, which seems to consist of the players being violently mutilated in various inventive ways. The players then leave the football pitch and invade the spectator's flat.

A behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of Barta’s masterpiece.

Tomáš Etzler worked for seven years as a foreign correspondent in China. He came to know a country that was developing at an admirably fast pace, was swayed by its energy, and for a moment believed that modernity could bring about political change as well. Before long, it dawned on him that many people would continue to be severely punished, and the regime would still keep most of the nation in a state of indecision and ignorance. Without neglecting that face of China today, Etzler chose to tell a story of hope in his personal documentary. Using the example of an orphanage for disabled children, he shows that the answer to collectivist brutality and ruthlessness can be mutual assistance, tolerance and empathy.

Bohus is indolent and spends his days drinking brandy. One day he finds he has inherited a brickworks, several shops and a five-star hotel. Bohus sets out to tour his new empire, insulting everyone on the way.

A satiric film travesty of Shakespeare's dramas set in the year 2000. The protagonists are to convince the audience that human passions such as love, hatred, jealousy, etc. remain unchanged even 500 years later (paralleling the up-to-date quality of Shakespeare's dramas).

A microbe enters the bloodstream of a young woman.

A poetic, but chilling story of seven puppets in train car prior to its journey to a concentration camp.

When the village school master discovers the body of a mean-spirited, miserly old woman, with whom he has had a disagreement, he decides to dispose of the body himself without alerting anyone else to it, but when the body is discovered by another villager the same cycle begins again, with the body eventually passing through the hands of half of the village.

This animated puppet film based on Russian folk tales tells the story of the hero Svätohor and his battle with the dragon Goryn Gorynych.

Animation of recently discovered floor drawings on the wall of the former ghetto, combined with a reference to the opera Brundibár, which was supposed to become proof to the world of the wonderful lives of imprisoned children.

The distinctive artist, typographer, and writer Josef Váchal is known to the public primarily for his Blood Novel. The surrealistic exuberance of this defense of 19th-century pulp fiction caught the attention of Jaroslav Brabec and his colleagues, who found a corresponding image of 20th-century "trash." The authors' interest focuses primarily on the silent film era, with a journey through the history of cinema continuing through the advent of sound film to the present day (auteur cinema of the 1960s, modern horror), formally employing techniques such as tinted film. The versatile parody intertwines a colorful plot with the story of the author (Váchal/Paseky), who comments on and creates his book, and is further split in the plot into the characters of Fragonard and the Master. As with Váchal, reality increasingly enters the fiction, so that the only "happy ending" turns out to be the artist's finished work.

A film story based on the old Prague legends. It tells about a poor student lured by wealth, which he prefers to knowledge. In the end, he sells his soul to the evil powers. The Devil takes him to hell and since then there is a blackened hole on the ceiling of a Prague house.

Three surreal depictions of failures of communication that occur on all levels of human society.

The film, 'The Spring Of Life', brings to light a little-known operation of the Nazi SS, started just before the outbreak of World War II. Through the careful selection and re-education of young women, it was the Nazi's mad dream to create an Aryan 'master race'.

Pat & Mat is a Czech stop-motion animated series featuring two handymen, Pat and Mat. It was created by Lubomír Beneš and Vladimír Jiránek.