Yuri Norstein's Top 20
A master animator picks favorites.
Welcome! It’s time for a new Thursday issue of the Animation Obsessive newsletter. We’re fresh off our break — thanks again to everyone for the amazing response to Sunday’s return issue.
Today, the focus is on Yuri Norstein. His work is known everywhere: films like Hedgehog in the Fog (1975) established him as maybe the finest animator born in the USSR. Less known, though, are Norstein’s own favorites.
A little over two decades ago, he named 20 of them. It happened in Japan, where Norstein was (and is) deeply respected. An animation festival — Laputa — polled insiders and experts about their favorite animated films. People like Yoichi Kotabe and Reiko Okuyama responded, as did Takashi Nakamura (Catnapped). Norstein was among the key foreigners asked to contribute.1
His picks were international, and they stretched from the 1910s to the 2000s. He wrote that he was highlighting discoveries in particular — films that broke ground in the medium. A good example is his choice of Night on Bald Mountain (1933), animated via pinscreen.
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