Alois Nebel in Venice

The Out of Competition section of the 68th Venice International Film Festival will in a world premiere present the debut by Tomáš Luňák Alois Nebel among the 33 selected titles. The film is a Czech, Slovak and German co-production project.

The film adaptation of the graphic novel Alois Nebel tells a mysterious story with a specific atmosphere. The authors have chosen rotoscoping in order to keep the visual style of the original comic book. Each scene of the film was be shot with actors on location or in the studio and then redrawn and animated. Alois Nebel is be the first Czech film using this unique technology, which combines animation and live-action and which was used in the films Waking Life (2001) or A Scanner Darkly (2006).

The end of the eighties in the twentieth century. Alois Nebel (Miroslav Krobot) works as a dis­patcher at the small railway station in Bílý Potok, a remote village 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. Alois can’t get rid of these nightmares and eventually ends up in sanatorium. In the sanatorium, he gets to know The Mute (Karel Roden), a man carrying an old photograph who was arrested by the police after crossing the border. No one knows why he came to Bílý Potok or who he’s looking for, but it is his past that propels Alois on his journey.

Venice IFF will start August 31, 2011 and will be held for 11 days. Besides Alois Nebel the Out of Competition section will present films by Todd Haynes, Madonna, Al Pacino, Steven Soderbergh. The Official Selection will present new films by Andrea Arnold, George Clooney, Emanuele Crialese, David Cronenberg, Roman Polanski, Todd Solondz and others.

Last year the film Surviving Life by Jan Švankmajer was presented in the Out of Competition section, as well.

Out of Competition		ALOIS NEBEL CZ-SK-DE - 80 min. - 2011 - fiction / animation director: Tomáš Luňák
		screenplay: Jaromír 99, Jaroslav Rudiš DOP: Jan Baset Střítežský editor: Petr Říha set designer: Jaromír 99 cast: Miroslav Krobot, Marie Ludvíková, Karel Roden, Leoš Noha, Alois Švehlík production: Negativ [cz], Česká televize [cz], UPP [cz], Soundsquare [cz], Tobogang [sk], Pallas Film [de] sales: The Match Factory
		VENICE IFF SCREENINGS: 4. 9. - Sunday - 00:00 - Sala Grande

published: 28.07.2011
updated: 31.08.2011