Independent film and art production company Cagliostro was founded in 1992 in Prague by Finnish-born director Katariina Lillqvist and her colleagues from the former Jiri Trnka Studio, where Lillqvist started to work as an apprentice in early Nineties. Later it converted into the form of co-operative, with official name of Film Cooperative Cagliostro and was registered in Tampere, Finland, on 1999.
Today, Cagliostro has grown from a small, alternative company into a renomed production house with wide international network.
The company philosophy of Cagliostro is strongly based on multicultural thesis. We are proud to produce films, that are viewed not only by the mainstream audience, but also by sexual minorities, immigrants, Roma communities and war refugees.
The name of Cagliostro is a hommage to late Finnish painter and sculptor Juhani Harri who described the life of mysterious Count Cagliostro many times in his dark and surrealistic works.
Currently Cagliostro also runs animation studio in Czechland and hosts the Museum of Puppet Art in central Prague, with the permanent collection of the puppets, decorations and props from company´s Czech-Finnish co-productions from the years 1991-2022. See also www.praguepuppetmuseum.com