(SÍLENÍ, Jan Svankmajer, Czech Republic 2005, 118 min., Czech with subtitles, 35mm).

The latest provocation from surrealist master Jan Svankmajer (Little Otik, Alice, Faust) is loosely based on two short stories by Edgar Allan Poe and inspired by the works of the Marquis de Sade. In 19th-century France (albeit one full of deliberate anachronisms), a young man plagued by nightmares is invited by a marquis to spend the night in his castle. There, our hero witnesses a blasphemous orgy and a “therapeutic” funeral before being transported to a surreal lunatic asylum where the patients have complete freedom and the staff is locked up behind bars. Described by Svankmajer himself as a “philosophical horror film,” Lunacy combines live action and stop motion, sex and violence, Grand Guignol terror, gallows humor, and a lot of animated meat.