The Feather Fairy

On top of a snowy mountain lives the Feather Fairy. Her work is the snow: when she shakes out her pillows it falls on the world below. One day she takes in a boy, Jakub, who is about to freeze. He grows up there, and to him it feels as though no time is passing. Then he wants to go back down to the village, because there is a girl. But down below the years have gone by. Jakub has no fear of death, which both protects him and gets him into trouble. Money, greed and fear are waiting for him in the village. Juraj Jakubisko directs the Slovak film; eighty-nine minutes, with Giulietta Masina in the title role. It comes from the Grimm tale of Frau Holle. A Czechoslovak-German co-production, it became one of the fairy tale films shown on television to generation after generation in central Europe.