After half a century, the old good fairy tale returns to the screens.
On January 1, 2026, the film "Burattino" directed by Igor Voloshin and produced by Konstantin Ernst will be released — an adaptation of Alexei Tolstoy's "The Golden Key" featuring the same songs that were heard in the Soviet television film released half a century ago. (Partly, this is a film version of the play "Burattino," which is being performed at Alexey Rybnnikov's Theater, the author of these wonderful songs).
The tortoise is no longer a tortoise: just an elderly sorceress living on a submarine, granting living beings (not all of them) the right to experience a miracle. By the way, her name is now spelled with one "l."
The door behind the painted hearth now leads not to some puppet theater, but to a room of wishes, like in "Stalker"; there you can ask the universe for anything ("just not to resurrect or make anyone fall in love").
Instead of a cricket playing the violin — there are three talking (and flying!) cockroaches (voiced by Nikolai Nikolaevich Drozdov, singer Vanya Dmitrienko, and comic improviser Anton Shastun).
Malvina, in a wonderful performance by Anastasia Talizina, is no longer a haughty goody-goody inclined to educate everyone, but a shy, life-weary young artist tormented by Karabas. By the way, she is not a puppet, but a human, just like her stage colleague Artemon (Mark Eidelshtein).
And also — Harlequin (Ruzil Minekaev).
And Pierrot (Stepan Belozerov): all the characters in this film are human, only Burattino is not.
And the action unfolds in an almost real Italy, say, at the beginning of the 20th century: the characters say "Buona sera," and the music has a distinctly Italian mood (the music was controlled by its composer Alexei Rybnnikov, who gave it exactly the sound that, according to the original concept, was supposed to be in the Soviet television film).
And yet this is a completely different "Burattino," and despite several shortcomings, it is no worse than the old Soviet film. At times it is so inventive that completely unexpected things happen: you are interested in watching it because you want to know what will happen next. As if you do not know the plot, have not read Alexei Tolstoy and Carlo Collodi, and have not seen half a dozen film versions of "Pinocchio."
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