母牛

Although this animated film is an early work by Alexander Petrov (nominated for the 1990 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film), its distinctive painterly quality is already deeply impressive. Each frame, when extracted individually, stands as an exquisite oil painting. 　　 Beside the railway tracks in a Russian countryside, an ordinary family of three lives. In the boy's memory, his family once lived a peaceful and beautiful life with a cow and her calf. The cow served both as a plow animal for his father to till the land and provided them with milk to drink. Later, the father sold the calf. Grieving, the cow, during one of her labors when the father was away, performed a series of frantic actions witnessed by the boy. Soon after, disaster struck. From then on, the cow, the calf, the train, and the plow became fixed images in the boy's mind. Whenever he recalls the past, a bittersweet mixture of sweetness and sorrow always rises in his heart.