The best Jan Budař’s animation movies

The Dung Beetle is late, the Parasite is asleep and Mrs Larva is more interested in her knitting than the director’s instructions. It’s clear: this amateur theatre company has a long way to go before they can perform their version of The Insect Play, a famous satirical work from 1922 by the brothers Karel and Josef Čapek which features insects with decidedly human traits: greed, egocentrism, jealousy.

Life is not easy for Laika, a dog on the outskirts of a big Russian city. She is caught and forcibly retrained to become a pioneer in astronautics. Soon after her lift-off into space, a number of animals follow that are hurriedly launched from Houston and Baikonur. The animals travel astray, but finally manage, with the help of a black hole, to colonize a faraway planet. After a short period of harmonious, undisturbed co-existence with indigenous life forms, however, first human cosmonaut run ashore on their planet, and their harmonious life, indeed their very survival, are suddenly in jeopardy.

What is the meaning of life? What is love, humor, fear and death? Is it all just a dream? Who are we? Will we wake up, will we remember? Do beings from other dimensions help us? Can we finally understand the purpose of the Game? Who is the Creator? Where is the Kingdom of God? The new feature movie called The Meaning and Mystery of Life is looking for answers to these questions and many others as well. Question for Petr Vachler, the author of the story and screenplay, and the movie director: Why did you decide to make such an author-pronounced movie? “As a small kid I used to hide behind the house and cry because there was an end to everything, and there would be NOTHING afterwards. But what was that big NOTHING? This question accompanied me all my life, probably just like it has to the majority of us all.

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.