R.U.R.

MURDEROUS TALES is a special effect animated feature film combining live actors with 3D/2D animation, puppets and back projection. It contains three stories: Antonio Cacto, Lighthouse and The Big Man, plus three ultra-short films called Charge the Dragon. Each episode uses different production technology and is in a different genre, but both their form and their content are related. All the episodes are about double standards and the topics of heroism and death. Something very small meets something very big (a tiny knight meets a huge dragon, an old Mexican goblin meets a man, a tiny Professor meets real-life cows, two mobsters meet the Big Man). All these meetings result in the heroic death of the small principal characters. Each script sees heroism and death differently.

The architects' plans for Central Bus Station to swallow visitors has turned into an endless maze of corridors. Once a gift to the citizens of Tel Aviv now serves to the immigrants. Yonathan has been a guide there for 17 years and is able to show the other side of the station's significance to those who walk with him. Yonathan knows that the purpose of going down to the building is to find not only himself, but also a society that harbours its values, protects its original traditions and wants to defend its home.

After a painful divorce, 50-year-old Nadia finally finds a good flat for reasonable price for her and her daughter. Too good to be true, and soon, albeit too late, she comes to understand the reason for the bargain. Her close neighbour in the house is mentally ill Valika who terrorises everyone around her. Piussi’s film creates a string of absurd encounters with increasingly menacing effects, but it is – at its core – a fantastically precise film about humanism, its consequences, its possible limits.