A rare well-drawn paint-on-glass animated film that's NOT directed by Aleksandr Petrov. About a boy who has a pretty terrible life at home and at school (partly through his own fault), who is saved by "the magic of Christmas" (and the tree was still put up at Christmas in Russia at the time that this story was written, not at New Year's). Although a good film (and the director's ONLY film), I do think that on the whole I prefer the original story. The film makes the boy who is the main character a little less nasty (it takes out all the times he bullies the other kids), adds a dream sequence (that ties in with a poem by Vladimir Nabokov that seems like it was made for this story, thought it was really written a few decades later), and plays up the hopefulness and the benefits of religious salvation, leaving out parts of the original story which are rather more ambivalent about the matter. The original story at least implies that the "magic", such as it is, does not last past Christmas, while the film ends on a hopeful note.

This is part of a trickle of animated films with a specifically religious message that have been funded in Russia in recent decades. They aren't especially well-represented on this site yet, but I should probably add some more of the most "notable" examples.