An often-beautiful Russian stop motion-animated feature film based on Andersen's fairy tale using the music of Tchaikovsky (and a heavy dose of "chipped-shoulder Russian intelligentsia" subtext, if one chooses to notice it).

I originally made the English subtitles back in 2010, but they were only shown in one place as far as I know. I think translation-wise it's some of my better work. This film mostly consists of songs, and I managed to translate them entirely in the same rhyming meter while keeping the meaning very close to the original words. Even if "official" subtitles turn up somewhere else, this is probably better.

Opinions about this film among Russian viewers (at least judging by the comments on RuTracker) seem to be extremely polarized with very little middle ground or respect of those with the opposite view. As one person summed it up, if you don't like the film you are apparently "idiotic cattle", and if you like it you are a "member of the intelligentsia prone to sentimentality and a love of vengeance". Of those with children, most mentioned that their children liked it even if they themselves were more ambivalent. As for myself (leaving aside questions of art design and animation quality, which are great throughout), I think it has both some really wonderful parts (especially closer to the end) as well as some questionable ones. There is a bit too much repetitiveness in the middle. I do definitely think that the director was or is bitter at the society he lives in and that this made its way into the film, but in some places the film really rises above that and in others it doesn't. Where it doesn't is where I think viewer perceptions seem to become polarized... which may be why a number of commentators have written that this film is like a mirror.