Menu
© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 52 movies from Krátký film Praha – Studio Jiřího Trnky
Animated short film based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" and Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's "A Torture by Hope".
Jul 1983
On her fifteenth birthday the princess finds a diary written by her mother when she was young. The diary tells of the Queen's secret, early love. The Princess goes into the forest to meet her mother's former lover. When she looks into his eyes, she realizes why her mother had fallen in love...
Aug 1990
Using an array of gloves in different styles and from different historical periods, the film is a short history of the cinema - from silent movies via pastiches of Buñuel and Fellini and Close Encounters of the Third Kind to a futurist junkyard where tin cans become animated police cars in a city of urban decay.
Jan 1982
A fairy-tale about a brave, self-sacrificial and faithful girl named Maryska who sets free an enchanted princess and her twelve maids from a mysterious castle.
Jan 1979
Three surreal depictions of failures of communication that occur on all levels of human society.
Jan 1983
Aug 1993
Animated drawings inspired by Leonardo da Vinci are intercut with seemingly unrelated (but in fact strangely similar) live-action scenes.
Jan 1972
Wealthy but alone, a king spends his days obsessively polishing shiny objects throughout his opulent castle. After a visit from a puckish forest wizard, the king earns a blessing – or curse – that turns anything he touches to gold.
Jan 1980
Pieces of wood are captured by a crow and dance in celebration of spring in this animated short film.
On the planet Ygam, the Draags, extremely technologically and spiritually advanced blue humanoids, consider the tiny Oms, human beings descendants of Terra's inhabitants, as ignorant animals. Those who live in slavery are treated as simple pets and used to entertain Draag children; those who live hidden in the hostile wilderness of the planet are periodically hunted and ruthlessly slaughtered as if they were vermin.
Dec 1973
An animated exploration of the human head
The story is a celebration of the cleverness and wit of the simple peasant Čupera, who triumphs not only over the demon of alcohol, but also over the bureaucratically persistent and thorough devil. The hell that the farmer goes through during the withdrawal process is stylized as a shantytown, a galley with a prison and a dehumanized night club.
Jan 1991
One of the film stories based on the old Prague legends. This one is about the old master clock maker Hanus who construed the Prague Old Town astronomical clock. Master Hanus' clock started working for the first time in 1490 but did not tell the time for too long. Soon the master, blinded by the perfidious town councilors, stopped it for more than 200 years.
Apr 1977
A king and his three daughters must contend with the hairy wiles of the "ugly bastard" known as Omnifurous.
Jan 1978
Happened in Prague on a cold February evening, 1917: the poor violinist's atrium runs out of coal and his dancing mouse becomes ill. The coal bucket is empty, and without sparing any effort, the faithful bucket rides its master through the air towards the home of the carbon trader...
Oct 1992
Short movie by Bretislav Pojar
A man sits down to watch a football match, which seems to consist of the players being violently mutilated in various inventive ways. The players then leave the football pitch and invade the spectator's flat.
Jan 1988
A darkly brilliant stop-motion adaptation of The Pied Piper of Hamelin about a plague of rats that punish townsfolk corrupt with greed. One of Czechoslovakia's most ambitious animation projects of the 1980s, notable for its unusual dark art direction, innovative animation techniques and use of a fictitious language.
Jul 1986
A long time ago, there lived a tailor in Selva who was highly regarded for his good work. However, he was a crook who often cheated his customers. This is what happened to Hans, a carver, whose wedding suit turned out to be too small because the mayor's son was dressed in the fabric he had taken. Then Rübezahl intervened. The magic power of the mountain spirit caused all the cloth, which the tailor had wrongly acquired, to dissolve into nothing. Some people, including dignitaries, stood there in their underwear and the tailor felt the wrath of those who had been cheated. Hans received a new suit and shoes from Rübezahl and was now able to marry his Marie.
Apr 1983