The Race was the first among over 50 episodes of the puppet animation series Filopat & Patafil that animation director Günter Rätz and his team produced for an adult audience from 1962 to 1968. Rätz created the two silent puppets made of wire and wood, who move like pantomimes and act in minimalist, modern settings of recycled objects telling daily stories of human behaviors and attitudes. All stories have a common throughline: What Filopat tries to do by unfair or reckless means, Patafil succeeds in doing the right thing by being clever. The score of the 5-minute shorts helps to tell the stories with music modulated and played by an electronic organ that takes over and replaces the language like in old silent films. With this series, the DEFA Studio for Animation Films caught up with international trends and the stories of Filopat and Patafil became, with the help of the French company CAP-Films Distribution, an export hit and aired in Italy, France, and the UK.