The ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival has just announced the 29 nominees for its 2014 competition, and this is one of them. It’s also a Vimeo Staff Pick — testimony to the high quality of the animation and production. Tytus Majerski’s description reads:

Stop-motion mixed with CG, short film based on a polish lullaby written by Janina Porazińska. Author of original music unknown. Performed by Maria Peszek.

A home made project, which I graduated with at my film school in Poland.
It combines cut out animation and 3d set-ups.

Janina Porazińska (1888-1971) specialized in children’s poetry, fairy tales and other folkloric material. The translation used in the titling is by Magda Bryll.

Mar Belle reviewed the film for the blog No Film School:

Have you ever noticed how parents seem to delight in terrifying their children? Whether it’s old wives tales of wind changes leaving their faces contorted or the devil stealing their souls post-sneeze, there are endless ways for adults to keep children in a perpetual state of fear. However, the cruelest has to be those moments before bed, when they’ll soon to be abandoned to a long, dark night with tales of cannibal witches or bone grinding giants stalking through their heads. Depicting the tragic story of a love triangle between a king, a princess and a page, Tytus Majerski’s atmospheric adaptation of Polish writer Janina Porazińska’s lullaby Once There Was a King, is cut from the same gruesome cloth that keeps nightlight companies in business.

Read the rest.