Synopsis
Tale of Tales (Сказка сказок, 1979) is the 29-minute hand-drawn short by Yuri Norshtein you can watch online on iFILM — a film critics have repeatedly voted the greatest animated work ever made. Don't expect a plot. Expect memory.
A small gray wolf from an old lullaby wanders through fragments of one childhood: a courtyard table under an apple tree, a snowed-in lane, men leaving for the front while a 1930s tango plays. Norshtein assembles these scenes by feeling rather than story, the way images surface just before sleep. Aleksandr Kalyagin's narration and the music of Bach and Mozart hold the pieces together.
This is slow, wordless, deeply personal cinema — built frame by frame with cutout animation over several painstaking years, circling war and the people it took away. Patient viewers who love poetic, demanding film will find a lot here. Stream Tale of Tales (1979) online on iFILM.
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