Moldova: EU and UNDP help to animate Ion Creanga’s fairy tales

The fairy tale characters of the famous Moldovan and Romanian writer and schoolteacher Ion Creanga (1839 – 1889) have come alive in a new digital format. With EU financial support, offered within the EU ‘Confidence Building Measures’ Programme, implemented by UNDP, the ‘Kreyon’ animation studio has developed a project ‘Fairytales of Ion Creanga in 2D’. Now, Creanga’s characters are talking to the children not only in Romanian, but also in Russian and even in English.

A team of 20 people, including designers, illustrators, a sound director and a musician, translators and actors, worked together for three months to animate the masterpieces of the beloved Moldovan writer. The following fairy tales were animated: “The Old Man’s Daughter and the Old Woman’s Daughter”, “Five Loafs of Bread”, “Two Coin Purse”, “The Woman with Three Daughters-in-Law”, “The Bear Tricked by the Fox”, and “The Goat with Three Kids”.

“We decided to reproduce the fairy tales in Russian and English hoping that the Russian-speaking families from the right and left banks of Nistru, as well as the families that have emigrated to various other countries, where children do not speak Romanian anymore, would be able to see and understand them,” says the project’s coordinator Ion Savin.

The fairy tales were broadcast on Moldova 1 and Bendery TV. In addition to the publication on the Diez website, they will also be published on a YouTube channel.

The EU Programme ‘Confidence Building Measures’, implemented by UNDP, aims to increase the confidence between people living on both banks of the Nistru River by involving representatives of civil society, business and media communities in joint projects.

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Press release