Description:

A screen version of Pushkin’s fairy tale about Tsar Saltan, his son - the good and mighty bogatyr (knight) Prince Guidon, and the fine Tsarevna Swan.

The tsar marries one of three sisters and they have a son. The other two and their mother, consumed by jealousy, throw her and her son into the sea. They end up on an island where the boy meets a magical swan who grants his wishes. He ends up making three wishes, and receives everything that he desires.

Pushkin wrote this verse-tale in 1831 - it can be read in Russian here, and in English translation here.

This was the last film to be directed by Ivan Ivanov-Vano, who had by this point been a key figure in Soviet animation for over five decades. The other director, Lev Milchin, had started his career as art director on Ivanov-Vano's first really successful feature-length fairy-tale adaptation, 1947's The Little Humpbacked Horse. He left the studio a year after this film's release.

Soyuzmultfilm's director since 2017, Yuliana Slashcheva, stated in an interview that she believed it, alongside the "Return of the Prodigal Parrot" series, had been "the last notable work [...] aimed at the wider public" to be released by the studio until her arrival.

There had also been a major earlier animated adaptation of the same story in 1943, but this one is longer and uses more of Pushkin's text. Also, the 1943 film was then available only in black and white (the colour version is currently being restored and may become available once again in the coming years).

Awards:
1985 - XVIII All-Union Film Festival (Minsk): Prize "For the successful adaptation of a Russian classic fairy tale"
1985 - XIV Moscow International Film Festival: Best Animated Film