A Russian cartoon has won an award for best children’s animated film at the international festival of animation in the city of Banja Luka in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Woman’s Day Gift by Mikhail Dvoryankin has been described as a film “intertwined with simple story, motivated by a precise idea, and realized with extraordinary lyrical animation of sheer and pure art.”
The 8-minute cartoon from the Ural city of Ekaterinburg is set back in Soviet times, around the 1990s, and revolves around a timid schoolboy who has a crush on a girl in his class. Getting ready for the popular Soviet holiday – International Women’s Day on 8 March – Misha creates a lovely gift for his sweetie and goes to school. Will the boy overcome his shy nature enough to hand it over?
The beautiful, hand-drawn cartoon brilliantly shows a typical Soviet school with its non-children-friendly inflexible teachers, and belittled pupils trying to find a common language with the opposite sex.
The Woman’s Day Gift has a nostalgic feel and serves as a time machine that takes those who remember an authentic Soviet school “back to the USSR.”