The Humpbacked Horse

The peasant Ivan catches a magic mare that has been trampling the fields at night. In exchange she gives him two handsome horses and one small hunchbacked one with enormous ears. The little horse is ugly, but he talks, and he pulls Ivan out of trouble every time. When the horses catch the tsar's eye Ivan is taken into the palace, and then the tsar asks him for a feather from the firebird, then a ring from the bottom of the sea, then the Tsar Maiden herself. Each demand is more impossible than the last. Ivan Ivanov-Vano's animation is adapted from Pyotr Yershov's verse tale of 1834. He had already filmed the same story in 1947, so this is a director remaking himself. Sixty-seven minutes.