Cardboard Fortress: 8 Stories about Freedom

Causing victims and suffering, and then also indirect victims - refugees, stateless persons, dissidents - war conflicts are radical examples of conditions that result in the collapse of the integrity of the individual, her or his civil and personal freedom.

Oppressive regimes stifle freedom of thought, which disappears under the onslaught of aggressive, manipulative propaganda. Filled with irrationalities, the modern world threatens to become a dystopia. Well, it's no coincidence that a character from Farnoosh Abedi's film The Sprayer is reading Bradbury's cult novel Fahrenheit 451. That individual who is lost in the vortex of consumerist society is also unfree. Like the one who indulged in vices. As well as one who is subjected to racial, gender or religious negative stereotypes. It is no coincidence as well that for the title of this short introduction we have borrowed a syntagm from the synopsis of Slavek Zalevsky's film Fortress, at the beginning of which we are faced with the question: Are you different? And then the answer: It will be your fault! Freedom is hard to gain and easy to lose, that's why the cardboard fortress becomes a metaphor for appearances, illusions.

A delicate topic seen from eight different angles, Animanima's program Cardboard Fortress: 8 Stories about Freedom makes it special and important, because these are not only the critical views of the authors of the films, but also a demonstration of the power of animation as a film genre to absorb the seriousness of the topics and to communicate the whole spectrum of relevant meanings and values.