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Short film
Poster for Mean Barbara

Mean Barbara

1989 · 16 min

A wry, macabre little puppet fable that plays like a deadpan village farce, quietly funny and faintly grim.

Directed by
Vlasta Pospíšilová
Genres
Animation
Starring
Jan Werich
Overview
When the village school master discovers the body of a mean-spirited, miserly old woman, with whom he has had a disagreement, he decides to dispose of the body himself without alerting anyone else to it, but when the body is discovered by another villager the same cycle begins again, with the body eventually passing through the hands of half of the village.

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In the UKNo streaming, rental or purchase options known.
Directed by
Vlasta Pospíšilová
Genres
Animation
Starring
Jan Werich
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How it feels

Written by AI. It can be wrong.

Tone
  • darkstrength 2 of 3
  • absurdstrength 2 of 3
  • satiricalstrength 2 of 3
  • whimsicalstrength 1 of 3
Pacing
measured, 2 of 4, from slow-burn to relentless
Attention
engaged, 3 of 4, from background-friendly to demanding
Themes
  • death
  • greed
  • guilt
  • deception
  • isolation
Places
  • countryside
  • small town
Era
period
Audience
adult
Form
  • animated
  • nonlinear
Content intensity
  • Gore none
  • Language none
  • Violence mild
  • Sex none
All scales, 0 to 10
Scales, 0 to 10
ScaleValue0 to 10
Action1
Horror3
Humour5
Realism4
Romance0
Tension4
Darkness6
Complexity5
Emotional weight4

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Where to watch in the UK

No UK streaming, rental or purchase options are known.

Streaming data from JustWatch.TMDB

Details

Genres
animation
Directed by
Vlasta Pospíšilová
Written by
Jiří Kubíček
Starring
Jan Werich
Music
Vladimír Merta
Cinematography
Vladimír Malík
Runtime
16 min
Country
Czechoslovakia
Languages
Czech

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