Pavel Landovský

MURDEROUS TALES is a special effect animated feature film combining live actors with 3D/2D animation, puppets and back projection. It contains three stories: Antonio Cacto, Lighthouse and The Big Man, plus three ultra-short films called Charge the Dragon. Each episode uses different production technology and is in a different genre, but both their form and their content are related. All the episodes are about double standards and the topics of heroism and death. Something very small meets something very big (a tiny knight meets a huge dragon, an old Mexican goblin meets a man, a tiny Professor meets real-life cows, two mobsters meet the Big Man). All these meetings result in the heroic death of the small principal characters. Each script sees heroism and death differently.

The film is not merely a record of rehearsals, but above all an intimate look at the relationships between its individual protagonists. Nor is it a classic documentary, because the line between acting, creation, and recording reality is too thin. The film thus reflects not only the aging of outstanding actors, but also their relationship to today's world and their disappointment with the current state of Czech film and theater. It speaks to their fears, desires, and efforts to give their best.

Teacher Tomáš Majer, who joined a former special school in 2010, has disappeared. He arrived at the school several months after his sister Jana, also a teacher, was murdered. During the school year, the boys who murdered Jana Majerová mysteriously died. Tomáš Majer most likely avenged his sister in cold blood.

A hapless Prague actor is drafted at the last minute to stand in for the star of Boskovice’s Wild West Show, just to discover that throwing tomahawks at full gallop, surviving saloon can-can dancers, and keeping up with town “cowboys” is far more perilous than it looks on TV. As he stumbles through shoot-outs and broken bones (both of his, no less), he finds himself equally disarmed by the town’s fierce Western spirit, and by the smile of its most captivating beauty.

After many years, Anka Lomnická, a former countess and emigrant, arrives in Prague. By chance, she finds herself seated next to two characters from a crime story that gradually unfolds around Bubeník, a former guard of political prisoners. With her spontaneity, Anka meets old and new faces, one of whom is Věra, the granddaughter of the former administrator of the Lomnický castle, and her boyfriend, a young detective named Přemek. When Bubeník is found shot dead with a gun in his hand, Přemek is not convinced it was suicide and begins to uncover the past not only of the dead man, but also of his potential father-in-law and his friends, former political prisoners. Gradually, a whole series of people appear whom the ruthless Bubeník hurt in his lifetime...

Řehoř lives a contented life. His wife Evženie does not. After sixty years of marriage, eighty-year-old Evženie comes to her granddaughter, lawyer Katka, to ask for her help in divorcing her eighty-five-year-old husband Řehoř. Katka is shocked by her grandmother's decision and her harshness and intransigence. What must have happened in her grandparents' relationship that even decades have not been able to erase? Katka does not want to break up her beloved family and tries to figure out her grandmother's reasons. She uncovers her own family's dramatic past, but her grandparents' secret remains hidden from her. Her grandmother risks losing her granddaughter and hides the truth from her, not wanting to pass on the burden of her past guilt to the next generation. She tries to come to terms with the past and find peace. And Řehoř? Will Katka protect him?

When Oskar, a self-centred TV weatherman, cheats on his wife Zuzana with their au pair, she kicks him to the curb and enlists her in-laws in the search for a new boyfriend.

Czech literature teacher Josef Tkaloun, who is past retirement age, realises one day that he no longer understands his pupils, and so he quits… dramatically. What he does not predict is that in doing this he will lose his sense of place in society.

Gynecologist Michal is caught cheating and must deal with a tricky, almost classic, love triangle situation. In the comedy Catch the Doctor!, he will deal with it in several different ways. After his attempt to save his marriage does not go quite as planned, he returns to the beginning of the film, to the point of one decision, and starts over. Differently. A total of three times, viewers will return to the same place on the same day with the main character, and three times they will be amazed at what can happen.

A story of love, friendship, and solidarity, aspects of life that allows us to live with dignity even at the most difficult of times. Set within the walls of a Communist prison of the 1950s, a tale unfolds of a young couples' fragile love. An angry young man Lubos always felt defiance toward everything around him, and eventually this trait lands him in court. The verdict is clear and the punishment long and hard. But even in prison Lubos is unable to tame his love of jazz or the eternally blazing flame of rebellion he carries inside. There is no place on earth where love cannot grow. Lubos meets Dana in prison. Out of solidarity and support, their fellow prisoners hatch a small rebellion to help them fulfill their love - a love which has appeared in the wrong place at the wrong time.