Ivan Tsarevitch and the Changing Princess

Every evening in an abandoned cinema a boy, a girl and an old projectionist meet and invent tales. They research, draw, make costumes, and then become the heroes of the story they are telling. The film consists of four tales: The Mistress of Monsters, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, The Ship's Boy and his Cat, and Ivan Tsarevitch and the Changing Princess. It is not interested in the morals of fairy tales. It is interested in the urge to tell them: the frame story is three people turning a cinema into a studio, and each tale is presented as a product of that game. The form is Michel Ocelot's signature: silhouette theatre, meaning wholly black figures against brilliantly coloured backgrounds. The detail lives not in faces but in outline and in the rhythm of movement. The source is television. The four tales come from Dragons and Princesses, a series Ocelot directed that aired on Canal+ Family between 25 October and 5 November 2010. The cinema version opened on 28 September 2016 and runs 57 minutes. Who it is for: lovers of storytelling and of Kirikou and Princes and Princesses, and anyone after something visually unusual to watch with children. Who it is not for: viewers who want a unified feature. This is really four shorts, joined only by the frame.