Winner of the Grand Prize for Best Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival, Ostrov (Island, 1973) is a genial critique on the selfishness of modern society.
Khitruk was born in Tver, Russian Empire and came to Moscow to study graphic design at the OGIS College for Applied Arts. He graduated in 1936 and started to work with Soyuzmultfilm in 1938 as an animator. From 1962 onwards, he worked as a director. His first film The Story of a Crime was an immense success. Today, this film is seen as the beginning of a renaissance of Soviet animation after a two-decade-long life in the shadows of Socialist realism.
Diverging from the “naturalistic” Disney-like canons that were reigning in the 1950-60s in Soviet animated cartoons, he created his own style, which was laconic yet multi-level, non-trivial and vivid.
He is the director of outstanding animated short films including such classics as his social satire of bureaucrats, Chelovek v ramke (The Man in the Frame) (1966), the philosophic parable, Ostrov (Island) (1973) about the loneliness of a man in modern society, the biographical film Ein Junger Mann namens Engels – Ein Portrait… read more
The satire is perhaps a bit obvious (though strangely un-Soviet in feel, at least to me), but Khitruk's animation is, as usual, a delight. He was a master of so many different styles!
