Original title: Rusalka

Based on: Original screenplay by Marina Vishnevetskaya, inspired by Slavic folklore (the rusalka myth)

Director: Aleksandr Petrov

Screenplay: Aleksandr Petrov, Marina Vishnevetskaya

Cinematography: Vladimir Golikov

Music: Evgeniya Smolyaninova

Cast: Evgeniya Smolyaninova (singing voice)

Filming locations: Panorama Studio, School Studio ‘Shar’, Dago Productions (Russia)

Subtitles: English (EN), Romanian (RO)

Synopsis and Main Themes: In a remote winter landscape, a young novice monk pulls a young woman from the icy river — she vanishes before he can help her, but returns through the seasons, drawing him in with her unsettling presence. His elderly master understands what she is: a rusalka, an embodiment of carnal desire that threatens precisely the life the novice has chosen. The old man has known that pull himself, long ago. The film weaves together temptation, renunciation, and the fatal attraction of a being that does not love — but claims.

About the Director and Cinematic Style: Mermaid is Aleksandr Petrov’s fourth film and the last he completed entirely within Russia before moving to Canada for The Old Man and the Sea. Working from a screenplay co-written with Marina Vishnevetskaya and rooted in Slavic folk mythology, Petrov here reaches a new painterly richness: the icy river, the candlelit interiors, the mermaid’s luminous presence against winter darkness are rendered in oil on glass with a density and atmosphere that recall the great Russian figurative painters. The singing voice of Evgenia Smolyaninova — unaccompanied, austere — becomes the film’s emotional center.

Critical Reception and Impact: Mermaid received strong international recognition. At the 1997 Annecy International Animated Film Festival it won the Jury Prize; it received a Golden Bear nomination for Best Short Film at the Berlin International Film Festival the same year; and at the Zagreb World Festival of Animated Films (1998) it took the Grand Prize. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 70th ceremony (1998), marking Petrov’s third Oscar nomination in under a decade.

Historical Context and Cinematic Legacy: The rusalka — a spirit born from a woman who drowned after being wronged by a man — is one of the most persistent figures in Slavic folklore, present across Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish traditions. Petrov and Vishnevetskaya’s screenplay places this archetype within an Orthodox monastic setting, layering folk myth against religious imagery in a way that feels distinctly Russian. The film appeared at a moment when post-Soviet Russian animation was searching for new identities after the collapse of the state studio system, and Petrov’s work — deeply rooted in literary and folk tradition, yet formally unlike anything produced by that system — pointed toward one possible direction. Mermaid remains among the most visually accomplished works in the paint-on-glass tradition, and the finest demonstration of what Petrov could achieve with ten minutes, a frozen river, and a woman’s voice.