Showtimes 1

Select a showtime

No scheduled screenings

Tickets & extras 2

What’s on

Search for a film below

Results [0]

No results found

The Cassandra Cat
PG

To celebrate International Cat Day (08 Aug) we're screening a sumptuous, surreal satire that is one of the most visually inventive and uninhibited films of the Czechoslovak New Wave.

Drama • Family • Cult

In this modern-day fairytale and rediscovered Czech New Wave cult classic, an ordinary Bohemian village is visited by a magician (played by the great Jan Werich), his beautiful assistant Diana and a magic cat wearing glasses, with the power to reveal people in colours that indicate their true natures.

Robert, is a bighearted school teacher whose independence of thought places him at odds with the town's conservative authorities. When the cat reveals the villagers as they really are and the town descends into whimsical chaos, much to Robert's dismay, his humourless school principal Karel, vows to hunt down the feline and put an end to its anarchic reign.

Ahead of its time in experimenting with stylised colour and extended political metaphor, The Cassandra Cat is director Vojtěch Jasný's triumphant excursion into fantasy as a mirror of real-life social divisions and hypocrisies.

Details

Duration

1hr 41mins

Director

Vojtech Jasný

Featuring

Emília Vásáryová • Jan Werich • Vlastimil Brodský

Year

1963

Country of origin

Czechoslovakia

Language

Czech with English Subtitles

Strobe lighting

Guidance unavailable

Content guidance

No content warnings identified

“Whimsical, likeable, and inventive... One of the best early examples of the Czech New Wave.”
The Chicago Reader

“Ahead of its time in experimenting with stylized color and extended political metaphor, The Cassandra Cat is director Vojtěch Jasný’s triumphant excursion into fantasy as a mirror of real-life social divisions and hypocrisies.”
The Criterion Collection