MARTIROLOGIUM

A thief flees from the police, but his escape ends in a crash. Upon impact, he spits out a tooth—only for it to transform into an ignition key, restarting the wrecked vehicle. An old BMW speeding through a landscape where the laws of physics no longer apply. Is this hell? The thief, trapped inside, racing through a nightmarish landscape made of bones and teeth, drawn inexorably toward its center. There, a colossal, toothless head lies in slumber. As he drives, his teeth fall out, becoming part of the monstrous architecture and completing the maw of the sleeping entity. As the last tooth falls, the head awakens and swallows him. The head stirs… and swallows him whole, along with his car. But something is wrong. The combustion engine doesn’t taste good. Coughing, it spits him back into the real world—where he finds himself at the crash site, surrounded by police. This time, however, he is completely toothless.

Director’s statement
Martilogium plunges us into a world where reality crumbles and the boundaries between life and death blur. Inspired by European folklore and superstitions about teeth—symbols of vitality and health—the film takes this idea a step further: What if teeth are more than just a part of the body? What if they offer protection, or even serve as keys to other worlds? The storytelling unfolds without words—emphasizing visual symbolism, sound atmosphere, and animation that merges the tangible physicality of stop-motion with the magic of under-camera drawing. Visually, Martilogium draws from Gothic aesthetics, apocalyptic visions, and medieval depictions of hell. It is dark yet pulsating with energy—like the unsettling landscapes of dreams, both terrifying and mesmerizing at once.
At its core, Martilogium is a story of restless journeying, of searching and losing. The protagonist, a fleeing criminal, becomes an ironic inversion of the traditional martyr. The title itself twists the classical mea