Film Review South Africa

#OnTheBigScreen: My Sweet Monster

This week you can escape into My Sweet Monster, an animated adventure fairy tale from the Russian CTB Film Company.
#OnTheBigScreen: My Sweet Monster

In this animated fairy tale, a rebellious princess runs away from the royal palace and falls into the hands of the monstrous forest bandit Bogey and turns his life upside down. Barbara attempts to dictate her own rules in Bogey’s native forest. Being a creature of the wild, Bogey hates her for that but, as we all know, the line between hatred and love can be very thin…

My Sweet Monster is an animated fairy tale for the whole family,” says producer Sergey Selyanov, who founded CTB Film Company in 1992 and since then produced over 100 award-winning feature and documentary films. He is a recipient of the Russian Federation State Award for the film Kukushka (2002), as well as The Russian President’s Award for achievements in the field of the arts for children and youth and the Ikar Film Award for producing films that regularly achieve box-office success.

“The project took us four years to complete and that’s a long enough period to create something thoroughly and thoughtfully, without haste. International sales have been going well; we’ve sold to 97 territories so far. We hope that our viewers will like the new characters and enjoy this beautiful fairy tale,” says Selyanov, who produced My Sweet Monster with Skazka Animation Studio, which was founded in 2012 as a department of CTB Film Company, and producer Georgi Gitis, who graduated from the Animation and CGI Department of VGIK Film School in 2001.

“This is a fairy tale about love, or the power of love, to be exact,” says director Viktor Glukhushin, who graduated from the College of Animation Cinematography as a qualified animation artist in 1995. “The story is rather unconventional, with many unexpected twists and turns. We juxtapose two very different worlds: medieval palaces are full of modern technologies, which can be used to create mechanical and living creatures who have feelings and emotions. The main theme of the film resonates within me too: one shouldn’t seek happiness in the faraway lands for it could be somewhere nearby. We also have wonderful songs which we didn’t originally plan to include, but we later realised what an important part they played.”

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About Daniel Dercksen

Daniel Dercksen has been a contributor for Lifestyle since 2012. As the driving force behind the successful independent training initiative The Writing Studio and a published film and theatre journalist of 40 years, teaching workshops in creative writing, playwriting and screenwriting throughout South Africa and internationally the past 22 years. Visit www.writingstudio.co.za
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