Top Story: ‘The Wild Robot’ And ‘Arcane’ Lead 52nd Annie Award Nominations
TRAILER: “Alois Nebel” TRAILER: “Alois Nebel”

Trailer for Alois Nebel, a new Czech animated feature directed by TomáÅ¡ Luňák. It debuts this month at the Venice Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival, and opens soon afterward in the Czech Republic. The story looks engaging which is good because the graphic style that stems from the Waking Life school of floaty rotoscope doesn’t excite me at all. They combined the roto with a black-and-white palette, which has been a trendy look in recent indie animated features like Renaissance, Persepolis, Fear(s) of the Dark, and the semi-b&w Mary and Max. No word on international release dates, but stay tuned to the official website AloisNebel.cz.

Film synopsis if you want to know more:

The end of the eighties in the twentieth century. Alois Nebel works as a dispatcher at the small railway station on the Czech-Polish border. He’s a loner, who prefers old timetables to people, and he finds the loneliness of the station tranquil – except when the fog rolls in. Then he hallucinates, sees trains from the last hundred years pass through the station. They bring ghosts and shadows from the dark past of Central Europe.

The feature film Alois Nebel is an adaptation of the graphic novel by Jaroslav Rudiš and Jaromír 99 combining animation and live-action. The authors have chosen rotoscoping as the visual approach for the film in order to remain true to the style of the original comic book.

(Thanks to Tom for pointing out the story on Twitch)

Amid Amidi

Amid Amidi is Cartoon Brew's Editor in Chief.