The Overcoat
Upon finishing his film "Tale of Tales" in 1979 Norstein decided that the next project for his small team (consisting of himself as the animator and director, his wife Franchesca Yarbusova as the artist and his friend Aleksandr Zhukovskiy as the cinematographer) would be an approximately 60-minute-long film based on Gogol's short story "The Overcoat". Norstein has said that he considers "The Overcoat" to be as important a work of literature for him personally as one of the chapters of the Bible.