The best Yves Barsacq’s fantasy movies

In this episodic animated fantasy from France, an art teacher interprets a series of six fairy tales (each involving a prince or princess) with the help of two precocious students. Princes and Princesses was created using a special style of cutout animation, with black silhouetted characters performing the action against backlit backdrops in striking colors.

Tales of the Night is renowned animation auteur Michel Ocelot (Kirikou and the Sorceress, Azur & Asmar)'s first foray into 3D animation. A hit at the Berlin Film Festival, the film extends the earlier shadow puppet style of Ocelot’s Princes and Princesses, with black silhouetted characters set off against exquisitely detailed Day-Glo backgrounds bursting with color and kaleidoscopic patterns – the subtle use of 3D creating a diorama-like effect. The film weaves together six exotic fables each unfolding in a unique locale, from Tibet, to medieval Europe, an Aztec kingdom, the African plains, and even the Land of the Dead. In Ocelot’s storytelling, history blends with fairytale as viewers are whisked off to enchanted lands full of dragons, werewolves, captive princesses, sorcerers, and enormous talking bees - and each fable ends with its own ironic twist.

One morning, the rector of a small French village comes across a young man, lying unclothed and unconscious on a deserted beach. Intrigued, the rector has the young man carried back to his home. When he awakes the stranger calmly identifies himself as Jean, an angel who has just arrived on Earth. Naturally, the rector doesn’t believe this, but decides to humour the young man. At first, Jean’s arrival in the village causes no upset. He is a harmless soul, full of good intentions and capable of only the kindest deeds. But then the villagers grow wary of him, and this wariness turns to outright hostility when Jean unwittingly causes an accident...

4 tales about princesses and adventurers around the World: The Mistress of Monsters, The Wizard Student, The Ship's Boy and his Female Cat, Ivan Tsarevitch and his changeable princess.