YURI NORSTEIN & FRANCHESKA YARBUSOVA are animation legends in Russia and worldwide.
YURI NORSTEIN is a distinguished Russian animator and director, considered by many to be not just the best animator of his era, but the best of all time.
He has been a recipient of numerous Russian state and independent awards. In 1991, Norstein has been named Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture, in 2004, he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun of Japan.
In 1984 his film 'Tale of Tales' was named The Best Animated Film of All Time in an event organized by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles with critics and filmmaker judges from all over the world. In 2002 this film was also named the best animated film of all time in a Zagreb International Animation Festival poll. In 2003, an international film jury in Tokyo declared 'Hedgehog in the Fog' to be the best animated film of all time.
FRANCHESKA YARBUSOVA is an award-winning artist, the wife and collaborator of Yuri Norstein. Exhibitions of her artworks successfully showed in museums in Russia, France, Japan, etc. She is the recipient of the Great Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Fine Art.
