Aboard their cart, Dr. Rhubarb and assistant Cough travel from house to house to cure absurd diseases with their innovative remedies. Loosely inspired by 18th-century prints and cartoons about fear of disease and doctors, an exploration of the mystery of healing and thaumaturgy.
A juggler in a park opens his magic box and takes out 3 balls. The audience marvels at his dexterity, until one ball escapes. The mutinous ball takes on magical properties as it draws the juggler into a series of adventures with many levels of meaning: appearance, fantasy and love. Without words.
15-year-old Johan helps his 9-year-old brother, Oscar, to build a space rocket to go visit their dad. Johan has made up a story for Oscar, as to why their dad is no longer with them. But on the day that Oscar celebrates his 10th birthday, this lie turns into something unexpected. Will Johan tell Oscar the truth?
Abstract geometric diagrams come to life.
There is peace in the forest and among all of the animals there, including a pair of ducks who befriend Molly Moo-Cow. A pair of hunters come on the scene, go hunting and hurt the ducks, so it's Molly to the rescue.
Bulgarian stop motion animation that follows the adventures of six penguins.
A young man sees someone smoking and decides to deal with him.
A beautifully fluid sand animation inspired by Camille Saint-Saëns' piece, 'Danse Macabre.'
An animated film about the history and use of hot water.
During the holiday season, when the animals of the Central Park Zoo are preparing for Christmas, Private, the youngest of the penguins notices that the Polar Bear is all alone. Assured that nobody should have to spend Christmas alone, Private goes into the city for some last-minute Christmas shopping. Along the way, he gets stuffed into a stocking
During WWII, in the days leading up to Christmas, a woman arrives at an Italian Catholic boarding school for orphaned girls with a large cake and a plea for them to pray for her boyfriend, who is having an affair.
On a gloomy day, Gu takes a train back to his hometown for the first time in years to reunite with his wife and son, in court.
An alien being fights to complete an impossible task. A metaphor for the emotional weight one carries within, and the hardships when striving to rid oneself of it.
This short piece is somewhat romantic, despite its title. We do see the ogre however. He inverts himself into the action throughout the film. As usual, the action is partly symbolic, partly surreal.
In the vestibule of a hospital room, a young boy waits to see his dying mother. The clamor and spiralling movements of bodies around him intensify, forming a grotesque circus—a cacophonous circle that pushes the child back, depriving him of one final touch of his mother's hand. Using rotoscoped drawings suggestive of charcoal sketches, as well as 3D and object animation techniques, The Circus compels viewing with its unsettling realism. Colour is employed metaphorically to subtly express the promise and the memory of maternal affection. Nicolas Brault's highly personal film, suffused with poetic modesty, casts a poignantly sincere gaze on the heartbreak of a child facing the fearful, mysterious experience of his mother's death.
A person receives a delivery that ends up immoral.
In a hotel hallway, the camera plunges into the microcosm of the hotel corridor carpet. Between crystal structures and inhabitants of this world, we see an American house dust mite at work.
As rebels planned Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising, they were watched by two spies code-named Granite and Chalk. This documentary delves into British intelligence to tell their story, one century on. Funded by Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board, After ’16 is a creative response by Irish filmmakers to the events of Easter 1916. This collection of nine short films is a mixture of live-action, animation and documentary, telling stories from the eve of the Rising all the way to the Troubles in 1970s Northern Ireland and beyond.
A child is born. We see underwater swimmers representing this. He is young, in a jungle setting, with two fanciful "instincts" guiding him as swooping bird-like acrobats initially menace, then delight. As an adolescent, he enters a desert, where a man spins a large cube of metal tubing. He leaves his instinct-guides behind, and enters a garden where two statues dance in a pond. As he watches their sensual acrobatics of love, he becomes a man. He is offered wealth (represented by a golden hat) by a devil figure. In a richly decorated room, a scruffy troupe of a dozen acrobats and a little girl reawaken the old man's youthful nature and love.
A Cossack wandered in search of a better life, and his lifelong dream was a fast and beautiful horse. He had to meet him on the way a fortune-teller and a swamp waterman, which traded a horseshoe to a bunch of red peppers with the Cossack; and he had to beat the devil in cards and eventually find peace of mind in the family life with a beautiful Ukrainian girl.