''Inspektor se vratio kući'' () is a 1959 animated short film directed by

Vatroslav Mimica Vatroslav Mimica (25 June 1923 – 15 February 2020) was a Croatian film director and screenwriter. Early life Born in Omiš, Mimica had enrolled at the University of Zagreb School of Medicine before the outbreak of World War II. In 1942 he j ...

for

Zagreb Film Zagreb Film is a Croatian film company principally known for its animation studio. From Zagreb, it was founded in 1953. They have produced hundreds of animated films, as well as documentaries, television commercials, educational films and several ...

. It is described as a dizzying existentialist parable about an inept police inspector chasing his own fingerprint. Mimica collaborated with animator Aleksandar Marks and background artist Zlatko Bourek.

Reception

According to Animafest artistic director Danijel Šuljić, ''Inspektor se vratio kući'' was one of the most innovative animations for its time due to its "flat graphic style, experiments with perspective, space, and depth, and limited animation" being taken to a completely new level. It won the first prize at

International Short Film Festival Oberhausen The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, founded in 1954, is one of the oldest short film festivals in the world. Held in Oberhausen, it is one of the major international platforms for the short form. The festival holds an International ...

. The short film became popular enough to spawn a separate animated series called

Inspektor Maska (English: ''Inspector Mask'') is a Croatian and Yugoslav animation, animated comedy television series produced for television by Zagreb Film that ran from 1962 to 1963. Development The idea for the series originated from the 1959 animated short ...

, which started production in 1962. Zippy Frames says of the film; "The film certainly features a kind of wry humour, yet in a distinctive visual way. Just check the middle part of the film, where the inspector looks for the suspect fingerprint. Instead of himself running to get it, the different city backgrounds appear one after the other, just like stage curtains, with the main character essentially immobilized. It is as if the city itself orchestrates the inspector's own movements, with all the poignant connotations that would imply. Newspaper clips, Hollywood starlets, a jazzy soundtrack and a plot which becomes visually even more complicated and abstract than it had already been, makes this a really distinctive, convoluted, animated film noir."

References

External links

*{{IMDb title, 0172598 1959 animated short films 1959 films Croatian animated short films Yugoslav animated short films Zagreb Film films Films about police officers