Mountain of Gems (Seasons 1–16)

Mountain of Gems (2005) is a Russian animated anthology series for children you can watch online on iFILM. Each short episode brings to life a folk tale from one of Russia's many ethnic cultures — Tatar, Bashkir, Karelian, Armenian, Belarusian, Ukrainian and dozens more — and every story gets its own visual style drawn directly from that culture's traditional art.

The animation directors behind the project include Alexander Tatarsky, Konstantin Bronzit and Mikhail Aldashyn, some of the most decorated names in Russian animation, with voice work by Alexei Batalov and Yulia Rutberg among others. What makes it stand out from standard children's fare is the variety: no two episodes look alike or follow the same rhythm. For a Russian-speaking child it is folklore; for anyone else it reads as a short documentary in animated form, showing how differently people across one enormous country imagine heroes, magic and the end of the story. Stream Mountain of Gems online on iFILM.