In the Silesian mountains there stands a small railway station where trains snake back and forth and where the platforms are sometimes obscured by a fog which conceals all sorts of strange happenings. Nearby is a psychiatric hospital where people snake back and forth along the corridors. Alois Nebel is a man who knows both the station and the hospital very well. Like his father before him, he has spent his whole life on the railways, most recently as a train dispatcher.. He collects train timetables, drinks beer, smokes, and from time to time sees things that nobody else can. Somewhere along the way his mind became clouded by the trains passing through the station and crisscrossing their way through the century. It is in this state that Alois meets the Mute, a stranger who appears as if from nowhere, as if out of the past, and gets involved in a murder that happened in Poland but has its roots much closer to the railway station than Alois fathoms.

A much loved and acclaimed graphic novel by Czech collaborators Jaroslav Rudiš and Jaromír 99, Alois Nebel is getting the feature film treatment in its native land with first time director Tomáš Luňák at the helm. While we don't get a lot of their work over here the Czechs have a long history with film - both live action and animation - and it certainly appears as though Luňák has paid attention to how to do things right. The first teaser - more of an animation test, really - has been released and we can see immediately that Luňák is using a hyper-stylized version of the rotoscoping technique used in Waking Life and other films, though rather than really matching the look of his actors and environments Luňák is using the the footage being painted over as more of a framework to bring accurate renderings of the designs and characters from the original book to realistic life. And, if you ask me, this is about the best possible use that rotoscoping can be put to. Between this, Waltz With Bashir, the upcoming Metropia and a handful of other titles it appears that intelligent, not-for-children, European animation is very much on the rise.

** UPDATE **

We've just received word from Czech production house Negativ that this is indeed an animation test and not a true teaser for the film. Principal photography on the live action component of the film has not yet begun and they do not expect completion of the film for another three years. Which is a long wait. But if the test is any indication of what we'll be getting it'll be well worth it ...

Check the test out in the Twitch Player below the break.