Oldřich Kaiser

This savage masterpiece in stop-motion animation is a twist on the classic Robert Browning tale in a Gothic portrait of greed run amok.

A busboy with an inferiority complex and a driving ambition to become a millionaire quickly rises to become a head waiter, but the respect he craves continues to allude him. When he marries a Nazi gym teacher, the Czechs despise him even more, while the Germans barely tolerate him. Rare stamps taken from wealthy Jews make his dream come true after the war, but his first-class hotel is soon nationalized by the Communists and he ends his life in poverty and isolation.

Anger, emptiness, obsession, escape. This suspenseful thriller set in Czechoslovakia during the 1980s, is considered one of the best Czech films of the last two decades. Antonín, a member of the secret police, is filled with unspoken and unfocused anger and everything around him – both his family and work – depresses and bores him. So he fixes his attentions on an unattainable young woman named Klára and his futile effort to win Klára over pits him against his own people and the system itself. His rebellion is savage, purely personal and - in the pursuit of his goal - self-destructive. However, Antonín’s ruin may carry in itself a kind of a fleeting hope.