ALOIS NEBEL

As the end of the summer of 1989 approaches, Alois Nebel, a train dispatcher at a remote railway station on the Czech-Polish border, starts to sink deeper and deeper into his memories. The shadows and ghosts from his past start to become unbearable, and Alois is admitted into a psychiatric ward, where he meets The Mute, a man who clings onto an old photograph. Based on a graphic novel trilogy, which was inspired by American comics of the 50s, socialist realism and motifs from traditional paper cut-outs (a form of folk art of the region), Alois Nebel uses the rotoscoping animation technique and black and white photography to enhance the cloudy shades of Alois’s psychological make-up. By using the historically and politically charged geographical location of the Sudenten area at the heart of Europe, and also the symbolisms that a railway station offers (uniting, moving and carrying people, ideas and history itself), director Tomas Lunak creates a dark tale, where tenderness and hope manage to creep into the grey layers of the heavy atmosphere.