A scientific experiment goes wrong. Three comic book superheroes are materialized and start to run amok in the real world.
Section: Polish & Czech Fantastic Films
THE HAND
A poetic allegory about human freedom. An enchanted universe which will make a strong impression on the youngest spectators.
THE PIED PIPER
Jiri Barta’s audacious animation project draws inspiration from a famous German legend, The Pied Piper. Expressionistically structured, the film metaphorically depicts the shortcomings of a materialistic society.
ON THE SILVER GLOBE
This science-fiction film about the founding experience of a human society on a desolate planet is considered as the most daring visual experience in Zulawski’s oeuvre.
VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS
An unforgettable fairy tale experience. The non-linear narrative structure follows the sexual awakening of a young teenage girl and revisits numerous tales such as Oedipus, Faust or Snow White.
PASSAGE
An ordinary man roams the galleries of a passage, trapped as he is in a sort of strange space-time continuum from which he desperately tries to escape.
THE CREMATOR
The director of a cremator facility, a mildmannered family man, becomes unhinged by the corrupting influence of Nazi ideology and a delusional vision of a better future through more efficient crematoria.
END OF AUGUST AT HOTEL OZONE
Superb, thought-provoking sci-fi, something like Andrei Tarkovsky directing MAD MAX with an all-female cast.
THE DEVIL
A spiral of moral decadence corrodes 18th century Poland in this fast packed array of psychic and shocking scenes.
JOSEPH KILLIAN
Kafka-esque short effectively aims its allegorical shots at personality cults and the absurdities of a totalitarian regime.
CASE FOR A ROOKIE HANGMAN
Brilliant, surrealist updated version of Jonathan Swift’s classic symbolic social and political satire Gulliver’s Travels.
THE DAMNED HOUSE OF HAJN
A damned house slowly brings its hostages to a state of utter alienation, provoking incestuous sexual urges.
THE HOURGLASS SANATORIUM
Jozef wants to visit his dying father at the Sanatorium, but instead falls into a phantasmagoric and allegorical world. A stunningly beautiful and original film, a poetic reflection on the past and the irreversibility of death.
THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT
The Saragossa Manuscript, based on the picaresque novel by count Jean Potocki (aristocrat and adventurer) is directly inspired by historic events in Saragossa. It is a very unusual and enigmatic film with stories within stories. The action is situated in Spain at the beginning of the 19th century, a time that was very fertile for… Continue reading THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT
O-BI, O-BA. THE END OF CIVILIZATION
Nuclear war has driven the survivors in the mountains under huge cupola, waiting for a miraculous salvation by a space ark.
GA, GA – GLORY TO HEROES
A prisoner of a space colony is sent on a mission to a distant new planet. His surprise is huge when after his landing the planet’s citizens treat him like a hero.
Polish & Czech Fantastic Films
This year, Cinema Nova sets the spotlights on the East. The focus of the retrospective is the fantastic film production of two countries behind the former Iron Curtain (Poland and Czechoslovakia), nowadays three new members of the European Union. When we talk about Eastern European cinema, we do not immediately say genre movies. But fantastic… Continue reading Polish & Czech Fantastic Films
SEXMISSION by Juliusz Machulski
Two men take part in a hibernation-experiment. When they wake up, they soon discover that the world they were living in is turned upside-down: a world war has swiped the earth clear of its population. Only an animal-like group of cave woman, who have limited the interaction with the male gender to the use of… Continue reading SEXMISSION by Juliusz Machulski