Deaf Crocodile Films (Firm)

In the year 3084, a Modigliani-esque alien journalist with blue-green skin, Alma, boards a state-of-the-art spacecraft named Delta – whose highly advanced computer brain develops a mad teenage crush on her with disastrous results. An incredibly strange and strangely beautiful work of galactic eye candy, DELTA SPACE MISSION defies all rules of perspective and logic, like M.C. Escher and Moebius teaming up on a Romanian Saturday morning cartoon. Fueled...

Unflappable and unstoppable mouse secret agent Nick Grabovsky (László Sinkó) with his deadpan voice, baggy pants and a big “G” on his shirt, goes up against the criminal cat gang run by the sinister, metal-pawed Mr. Teufel (Miklós Benedek), in Hungarian director Béla Ternovszky’s surreal, animated sci-fi treasure. Set in the year 80 AMM (“After Mickey Mouse”) on Planet X where cats and rats have banded together to eliminate mice, the...

Inspired by a real-life tragedy, the infamous Cinema Rex fire in 1978 that triggered the Iranian Revolution, CARELESS CRIME follows three “timelines” – of arsonists planning to burn down a movie theatre; of workers and students at the cinema; and of characters within the film screening at the cinema – which may or may not all be happening at the same time. One of the most dazzling and enigmatic films in recent memory, Mokri’s mind-bending...

The astonishing debut feature from 23-year old writer/director Achal Mishra. THE VILLAGE HOUSE (Gamak Ghar) is a lovely, luminous and gentle portrait of a large extended Indian family over several decades as they gather at the matriarch’s rural home, following the inevitable rhythms of change, children moving away to the city, and the inexorable decay of traditional village life.

Director Jiří Barta’s stop-motion animated masterpiece, based on The Pied Piper of Hamelin, is set in a dark and twisted medieval village of narrow streets and weird Gothic arches, half-CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI and half-Jan van Eyck. The money-obsessed citizens, carved out of wood blocks and speaking in an onomatopoeic babble (invented by Barta himself) are like George Grosz caricatures, literally spouting coins from their mouths instead of words....

Imagine if Troma Films had been hired to make a Sid & Marty Krofft Saturday morning kids’ show, and if you have some idea of the unspeakable strangeness of VISITORS FROM THE ARKANA GALAXY, a truly gonzo Croatian sci-fi / fantasy about a struggling writer, Robert (Zarko Potocnjak), who dreams up a story of gold-skinned alien androids named Andra, Targo and Ulu from a distant planet. Incredibly, his fictional alien creations become reality, causing...

Set in a dystopian world of gleaming white towers, Sony video monitors and inflatable furniture, where the beautiful inhabitants all dress as Edie Sedgwick-like pixie sprites or medieval page boys out of Logan's Run, the film follows a historian of late 20th century culture (played by Arto Tuominen) researching the mysterious death many years earlier of a free-spirited erotic model. Director Jarva was one of Finland’s most acclaimed fiction filmmakers...

Based on a famous fairy tale in verse by Alexander Pushkin, THE TALE OF TSAR SALTAN is one of director Aleksandr Ptushko’s most sublime creations: a ravishingly beautiful fantasy about love, magic, betrayal and abandoned family. Like his earlier masterpieces Sampo and Ilya Muromets (also released by Deaf Crocodile), TSAR SALTAN is filled with breathtaking imagery: carved wooden lions who shed tears; peasants in pagan ritual masks, dancing in the...

From Achal Mishra, director of The Village House (Gamak ghar), DHUIN is a stunning, novella-length portrait of a 25-year old street theatre actor (Abhinav Jha, in a breakout performance) who is desperate to leave his rural hometown of Darbhanga for Mumbai, but finds himself trapped by family obligations, lack of experience and connections, and the all-enveloping fog of living. Like the films of Abbas Kiarostami (who is referenced several times here)...

A stuffy middle-aged foreigner, a businessman named Fabricius, lonely and looking for a night’s diversion, finds it in the form of a mysterious blonde, Zuzana. In an abandoned cemetery, she tells him three tales involving black magic and erotic obsession. In director Jiří Brdečka’s stunning “The Last Golem,” a young rabbi struggles to fashion a massive, silent giant out of living clay – until he’s distracted by a mute servant girl....