Merry Grandmas!
Several years we wrote about a subtle and delicate stop motion animated film created from tea leaves by Natalia Mirzoyan. This holiday season, Soyuzmultfilm released her new work, Merry Grandmas! In Russia, kids typically spend a lot of time with their grandparents, usually with their grandmothers, many of whom still inhabit shabby apartments filled with all kinds of curiosities – fur coats long gone out of fashion, dim crystal vases, elaborate tea sets, dusty photo albums, and sleepy cats. Wise and grumpy grandmothers are matriarchs of many families.
On the New Year’s Eve, parents bring a little girl named Masha to her grandmother who lives in the center of Saint Petersburg. Masha anticipates an extremely boring evening with grandma and her elderly friends, but things turned out quite differently. Crafted in a wonderfully naive style, this film is a loving depiction of Russian grandmas, their vanishing world, and New Year magic set in the old quarters of Saint Petersburg.
HISTORY OF RUSSIAN AND EASTERN EUROPEAN ANIMATION 
Hello,
I am looking for this animated movie since I was a child.
I had it on a VHS when my family first bought a VCR in the laste 80s in Italy. This was among the first VHS that were available for kids.
The movie (probably short, since I was 3-4 years old, and my attention span was proper to that age) is an animated movie about cars From what I remember, the “eyes” of the cars weren’t in their windshield like the Pixar movie “Cars”, but “were” the front lights.
The story was about two little cars falling in love while driving. I clearly remember the soud of the cars (the movie had no dialogue), which was mechanical and cute, like a little spring or a little gear moving slowly.
Suddenyl the two cars in love enter in a tunnel, when a big, black, earth-moving truck comes from behind and SMASHES flat the “female” car (i think she was red).
Then the “male” cars (blue?) go to a car-factory and browse all the new cars TO BUY ANOTHER FEMALE CAR, like the one he fell in love with.
I remember especially the scene where the car dealer (a car itself) literally browse thru endless little compact cars, in search of the right one. It was creepy the sense of easy replacement.
From what I remember of the style, the lack of dialogue, and the general creepyness, I would place this movie in the czechoslovakian/soviet animation.
Unfortunately, looking online for “Cars Animated Movie” gets 10,000 useless results about the Pixar movies and their clones.
One last clue is that, while I do not remember the title of the cassette, I remember that in the same VHS series, with the same cover art style, we had another VHS (for my sister) called “La Bambina e l’Elefante” (=”The girl and the elephant” in italian). I remember it clearly because it was on of the last sentences I learned to read.
I thank you for reading and I beg the community to help me find this cartoon!
Thank you very much! Bye!
Hello, I think you are looking for the Soviet film called The Road Tale (Дорожная сказка, Dorozhnaia skazka) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=305fHhdEmBY directed by Garry Bardin in 1981 for Soyuzmultfilm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garri_Bardin It’s one of his earlier pieces before he switched to the stop-motion medium. The finale is slightly different and the little cars are reunited at the end.