Fifty years after his death, the Soviet filmmaker Aleksandr Rou remains a cinematic icon in Russia and many other countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Dubbed 'King of the Fairy Tales' and 'The Main Storyteller of the Country', he transformed the landscape of Soviet fantasy and fairy-tale cinema during a directorial career that stretched from 1938 to 1972.

From the heights of Stalinist propaganda cinema, through Khrushchev's Thaw and into the Brezhnev Stagnation era, Rou's films celebrated and perpetuated the nation's folkloric traditions while constantly refreshing them for new generations of young audiences.

In English-speaking countries Rou's work remains relatively little known, having received only limited theatrical distribution in the West. With home entertainment now offering wider opportunities to discover his unique and exhilarating oeuvre, this book provides a timely introduction to the work of one of the world's great masters of fairy-tale cinema.

The book traces the developments of Rou's work on fairy-tale film, providing cultural and technical contexts of production, and analysing in a competent manner the features that mark Rou's personal style, whilst highlighting variations on narratives, actors and special effects. It is a joyful read and an impeccably organised text, which is well structured and brings out much more clearly the various phases in the development of Rou's films. The chapters provide excellent introductions that serve to contextualise and connect the narrative.