>>1
>it serves as a warning to those who only desire a peaceful life within their family home.
I see something different - I think it shows the tragedy that can result when traditional family functions and responsibilities are not followed. The first failure is of the son, who does not respect his father and rebels against him (he thinks he knows best, though actually he is in the wrong). The second failure is of the father, who is unable to forgive and better instruct his son, and decides to cast him out, though the son is naive and unready. The third failure, perhaps, is of the daughters, who, due to their grief, abandon their father in his old age.

This was Akop Kirakosyan's final film. I'm not exactly clear on what happened after. The studio had, by this point, been taken over by organized crime and being sold off for parts. The number of directors who could keep working in those circumstances was fewer and fewer each year. According to animator.ru, he moved into the studio's management in 1997, and became the studio director from 2004-2009.

He only made three films, but had quite a distinctive style, dynamic and gritty - apparently influenced by the aesthetic of early Pilot Studio & Tatarskiy, or maybe Sergey Kushnerov in Ukraine.

All of Akop Kirakosyan's films seem to be about the injustice, stupidity, excess and self-destruction he was seeing around him as the USSR was collapsing and transitioning to gangster capitalism. But he cloaked them as plausible children's stories. His last two films (the ones made in newly-independent Russia - Fatum and this one) even have happy endings that arrive right as the situation appears most bleak. But they're such ridiculously implausible happy endings that the viewer has almost no choice but to notice that they could only happen in cartoons and fairy tales.

This film in particular is about those who do the hard, unglamorous work that keeps the rest of the society from disaster, yet get no thanks (or bread) for what they do. The love and care they show is unrequited. The unstated question is, how long can they keep doing it, and what will happen if they stop? There were many, many such people in newly-independent Russia. They were taken for granted and pushed down, while lavish riches were given to undeserving incompetents and crooks. What makes this particular story a fairy tale is that the little chick never does stop, and the ruthless fox who would tear everything apart turns out to be really nice, actually, and just as willing as the chick is to work for no pay.

One of the YouTube comments says that the moral is that "you can find friends in odd places", but I'm not so sure that that's what most kids watching this would take away from it. Rather, the most memorable thing is the central injustice of the story, which is never resolved... or maybe I'm completely wrong, and they'll focus on the slapstick and fun music and completely miss all of that.

This is by far the darkest film by Leonid Kayukov I've seen so far. All the earlier films by him that I have watched were insanely sweet and child-friendly, while this one is not shy about showing blood and death. The last time I remember hunting being shown so relatively "realistically" in a Soyuzmultfilm production may be all the way back in 1938, in Aleksandr Ivanov's "Fyodor the Hunter" (not on the site yet). But the art style in this is much nicer and really radically different from any previous film by Kayukov, which tended towards the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

In the Perestroika era, artists were more-or-less left to their own devices in the USSR, while still being funded by the state. For some directors, this led to a real flowering as they finally felt bold enough to be more artistically daring, and their films became stronger (e.g. Galina Barinova). Others (e.g. Vladimir Tarasov) abandoned their successful previous artistic directions and began making rather questionable things. Sometimes (let's say, in the case of Aleksandr Petrov, or Robert Saakyants), opinions will differ.

In Leonid Kayukov's case, he seems to have chosen to spend this period making animated films about the natural world. I'm curious to see the others, now.

I've tried to find the textual source of the tale, by the way (by Vasiliy Yuksern), but with no luck.

I'm also not sure about that mask that appears in the beginning of the film. I couldn't find any photo or drawing of any Mari mask that looks like that - it looks rather more like a Native American mask.

A sad yet beautiful story; its ending reminds me of Milovitsa from Belarus. It truly is a masterpiece of Ukrayinian animation.

The sky has been intertwined with humanity since the dawn of history, so it inherently contains many of humanity's irrational aspirations. Each individual tries to send a few dreams, from small to large, into the sky, so the sky and its objects often reflect something in the human psyche. Even I, in any situation, try to photograph the sky, especially the cumulus clouds, as a way to relieve my soul. Each person, depending on their circumstances, easily associates the image of clouds with something they know from their life, but ultimately, it's just imagination; however, that imagination helps to uplift the soul. This story is great because it accurately portrays the psychological development of teenagers through the imagery of clouds. And you, what do you usually think about when you look at clouds?

>>3
>Music by Nodar Mamisashvili
Thanks, I've updated the subtitles.

A beautifully made film (even though it is, in the end, a sad story) about the importance of respecting the boundaries of those you love. Well, and about the physics of water too, I suppose.

The final film in the "Parasolka" series, made after a 3-year gap. It feels quite different from the rest, and is also probably the best of them. Which is no surprise, considering that the director was none other than Vladimir Dakhno, a master of comedic timing and slapstick who had already become well-known for his "Cossacks" series.

The basic plot is like Charlie Chaplin's "The Circus" (1928), if everything had turned out well.

Like the first two films in the series, this one focuses heavily on slapstick, and not very much on any actual social satire associated with car ownership. Its only "social message" is "drinking excessively is bad".

Music by Nodar Mamisashvili

Major error: the script editor is not Andrey Dmitruk, it could be Taisia Dimtruk instead as i observed T. Dmitruk instead of A. Dmitruk, the name Andrey has no T