Once Upon a Time, There Lived a Dog

Once Upon a Time, There Lived a Dog (1982) is a ten-minute Soviet animated short you can watch online on iFILM. A tiny film with an outsized place in Russian pop culture.

An old farm dog can't guard the yard anymore, so his owners throw him out. Wandering into the forest in despair, he runs into the wolf he once chased off — now just as grey and worn down as he is. The wolf decides to settle an old debt by staging a "kidnapping," so the dog can heroically save the baby and win his spot back by the house.

Director Eduard Nazarov drew on a Ukrainian folktale and built the whole thing on warmth rather than gags, with Georgiy Burkov and Armen Dzhigarkhanyan voicing the two old animals. In ten minutes it says more about aging and loyalty than most features manage in two hours. A "children's" cartoon you only really get once you're grown up. Stream Once Upon a Time, There Lived a Dog (1982) online on iFILM.