An atmospheric and occasionally almost fable-like but unquestionably true and still topical story. This Czech narrative of Central Europe’s dark and horrifying past is a wondrous gem of contemporary animation.
The end of the 1980s. Alois Nebel works as a dispatcher at a small railway station in Bílý Potok, a remote village on the Czech-Polish border. A loner who prefers old timetables to people, 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. The trains that took thousands to their death bring ghosts and shadows from the dark past of Central Europe, the Sudety Mountains. Alois can’t get rid of these nightmares and eventually ends up in a sanatorium, where he meets The Mute, a man carrying an old photograph. He was arrested by the police after crossing the border illegally. No one knows why he came to this remote place or who he’s looking for, but it is his past that propels Alois on his journey.
»For me it is a film about countryside, countryside that was humiliated and destroyed, but at the same time begins to defend itself. This fog could be the morning fog when nothing is seen yet. However this fog eventually resolves and a new day begins.« (Tomáš Lunák)
Tomáš Lunák
Born in 1974 in Zlín, Czech Republic. He studied animation direction at the Zlín Film School and at the prestigious Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts Prague. Since graduation he has directed a number of music videos, promotional films and animated shorts. Alois Nebel marks his feature film debut.