The films Alois Nebel (2011) and Dcera (The Daughter, 2019) are two of the most successful Czech animated films of the last decade. Both were made using innovative animation techniques, and their plots centre around characters that have to deal with difficult pasts. Dcera is a short film directed by Daria Kascheeva, a student at Prague’s film school. It touches on the universal theme of a troubled family relationship. Alois Nebel, on the other hand, is a feature film that deals with the more specific topic of Czech post-war history. Alois Nebel is director Tomáš Luňák’s debut. It is based on a comic-book trilogy by author Jaroslav Rudiš and illustrator Jaromír Švejdík, or Jaromír 99. The main character is the eponymous Alois Nebel, a middle-aged train dispatcher who lives in the forgotten mountain village of Bílý Potok. The story takes place during the turbulent time of the Velvet Revolution when Nebel becomes haunted by demons from his past. The train dispatcher suffers from flashbacks of the violent post-war expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia, which took place when he was just a child. The film was made as a coproduction involving three countries, as Luňák told Czech Radio.