The Tale of Tsar Saltan
In 1966 Ptushko returned to the genre of epic fantasy, creating "The Tale of Tsar Saltan". In 1968 he began work on the largest film project of his career "Ruslan and Ludmila", which was also to prove his last. Running for 149 minutes (split into two feature-length segments), "Ruslan and Ludmila" was a film adaptation of Aleksandr Pushkin's epic poem of the same name, and was filled with the sumptuous visuals and technical wizardry for which Ptushko had become known. The film took four years to complete, and was released in 1972.