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Tale of Tales
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Widely acclaimed as the best animated film of all time, Tale of Tales is a poetic amalgam of Yuri Norstein’s memories and hopes and fears for the future: his post-war childhood, remnants of the personal tragedies of war, the little wolf character in the lullaby his mother used to sing, the neighbours in his crowded communal flat, the tango played in the park on summer evenings, and the small working-class boy’s longing to emerge from the dark central corridor of the kommunalka into a luminous world of art and poetry.
Bio Yuri Norstein
Russian Yuri Norstein is best known for his animated shorts, Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale of Tales. According to the Washington Post, “He is considered by many to be not just the best animator of his era, but the best of all time”. After working as an animation artist in some fifty films, Norstein got the chance to direct his own. He debuted on 25th October, the First Day, sharing directorial credit with Arkadiy Tyurin. Throughout the 1970s, his animation style became ever more sophisticated, looking increasingly like smoothly moving paintings or sophisticated pencil sketches. Norstein uses a special technique in his animation, involving multiple glass planes to give his animation a three-dimensional look.
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- This film was #44 in the “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025